Reach
by ToixStory
Summary: One hundred thousand years in the future of Equestria, a young mare named Starlight must embark on an adventure across the country to find the first source of magic to appear in millennia: a baby unicorn.
1. Tomorrow Comes Today

A warm summer sun washed over the quiet mesas and sand dunes that surrounded the city of Sundown. It was a shining city of downtown high-rises and surrounded by suburban homes made of sandstone. Further out, massive fields of oil wells pumped day and night, bringing bubbling crude to the surface where it was put into barrels and shipped across the country.

The city clustered around one long highway that stretched across the desert valley. It was the same road, the Red Road, that ran across the country, connecting the cities of Teton from sea to shining sea. Though the modest desert city was not the largest, its choice of location had always stood as a testament to the perseverance of ponykind.

Past the edge of the city, in the shadow of the mesas, was a large camp. White tents were scattered across the rocky valley floor and their flaps blew in the restless wind. Ponies ran to and fro through the camp and around the edge of a large building in the center. It was a squat, metal building with heavy rivets that kept it in place over the ground.

Guards were kept posted outside the building at all times, and kept a sharp eye out for intruders. When they spotted the party walking toward them that day, their backs stiffened and nostrils flared. It wasn't until the oncoming group flashed their badges that the stallions stepped aside from the entryway.

The mare at the head of the small column turned to face her party. She wore a white hat with a wide brim over her golden mane. One teal hoof held it against her head to keep it from blowing away in the wind.

"This is the primary dig site!" she yelled over the ambient noise. "We've been expanding on pre-existing mine shafts and wells to expedite the digging process!"

The mare pointed out the building behind her and the logo on it, a phoenix with its talons crossed. With a smile: "By doing so, we have limited the costs to the university substantially!"

A thin stallion in the back, dressed in a blue blazer that hung off his lanky form, raised a hoof in the air until the mare called on him. "But it still _is_ costing the University of Sundown money, Miss Sunny?"

"That's _Professor_ Sunny," the mare said. "And yes, but we have alleviated some of the larger costs the university was concerned with by funneling them through national grant programs and private investors." Sunny beamed. "With those measures, the Department of Hippology is operating with the lowest overhead of any research branch!"

"Yes, yes, we understand, you're saving us money," a rotund mare at the front said. "But what the university financial committee is here for today is not cost-cutting, but results. We are all aware of your track record, Professor."

Sunny glared at her. The corners of her mouth wavered to keep the smile plastered on her face, but she managed. "Yes, of course you are. But I am here today to prove to you that we have done far more here than we could have ever predicted."

"I'll believe it when I see it," said the rotund benefactor.

Sunny ignored her and led the party through the entryway of the squat building. The interior was lit by bright red lamps to allow for natural night vision should they go out. A platform took up the middle of the room, painted bright yellow and with a security panel on one end. The sound of the crowd's hoofsteps on the metal echoed around the chamber.

Sunny took up position at the security panel and faced her flock. They milled around, looking for some of what they had been promised. The young mare shook her head and pulled a lever on the panel.

"You all may want to steady yourself," she warned. "It's a bit of a ride."

The platform shuddered and, with a high-pitched groaning noise, began to descend. Dull maroon lights built into the surface of the floor sprang to life, lighting the way for the moving rotunda.

A counter appeared on a digital screen attached to the security panel. Two hundred petra. Three hundred. Four. The sediment and rock around the platform warped and changed. It was darker, more packed together.

They passed another at a thousand petras down, then another at three thousand. The lights flashed over the stone and minerals in eerie silence. The benefactors huddled on the middle of the platform and watched thousands of years pass by in the blink of an eye.

At four thousand petras below the surface, the platform passed by the edges of the old coal mine. The walls were smoother, having been cut away by pony machinery. Below that layer, fossils in the wall appeared.

They were familiar to Sunny, but several of the gathered audience gasped at them. A massive dog-like creature that had walked on both four and two legs was one. The other prominent bone structure was that of some sort of hybrid creature: a flying animal with the back end of a mammalian predator.

Sunny looked away and watched the screen on the panel. It showed oxygen, nitrogen, and other gas levels at optimal down the tunnel. There appeared to be no breaks or leaks. The company had been keeping careful since re-opening the old mine shafts had hospitalized several workers. When the screen read ten thousand petras, she pulled the lever again and the platform began to slow down.

The brakes ground on the side of the shaft, filling the air with an ear-splitting screech. Sparks flew and bounced across the metal floor. Several of the delegates grabbed at their ears and cried out. Sunny just stared straight ahead and waited for the platform to come to a screeching halt at the bottom of the long, dark shaft. Looking above them, the ponies could no longer see the surface, just dark walls that spiraled up into nothing.

In front of the platform was a tunnel carved out of the rock, and lit by more red lights. Sunny hopped over to it and beckoned the crowd after her. "Readings from our sensors went off the charts when we were drilling down here," she explained. "We have been excavating here ever since."

She led the group of ponies in a trot down the tunnel, past stacks of excavation equipment and examination tools that lined the passage. Thick wires snaked along the ground, bringing electricity so far underground.

The group emerged out of the tunnel into a chamber in the shape of an upside down bowl. The walls sloped up to meet a point about thirty petras above them, fifteen times the size of the average pony.

"Most of our work has been concentrated here," said Sunny, "though we have a few other branching tunnels to spread the site. So far, none have been so fruitful."

The fat mare coughed and spoke up again. "And just what is so fruitful about this chamber, Professor?"

Sunny glared at her. "If you'll all try to keep up, I'll show you."

She led the party across the chamber, toward a grouping of rocks that jutted out from the center of the hall. The boulders rose like spikes toward the ceiling. Large lamps on stands surrounded the site, and boxes filled with tools were piled around.

Sunny took them in a circle around to the back of the rocks. When they reached the other side, many of the benefactors gasped and murmured among themselves. Sunny smirked and watched them fall over themselves, much of their hostility gone.

There was an object embedded into the center of the largest rock among the group. It was a large, glowing crystal, not unusual in the cave, but what was different was the shape. The cerulean crystal was carved into the shape of a perfect heart. The curves were far too sharp to have been made with anything but tools. Somehow, it glowed even when lights didn't shine on it.

"This is the . . . object you spoke of?" the rotund mare asked.

Sunny nodded. "We uncovered it a month ago while clearing away debris. We've been studying it, but the progress has been slow."

"Has it always been this active?" a stallion asked, moving closer to the heart. It almost seemed to pulse and glow with pale blue light.

Sunny stared at it, and shook her head. "I'm sure it's just, uh, perfectly normal."

The stallion reached out a hoof to touch the heart. Sunny saw and galloped over to him, smacking his hoof away and standing in between him and the heart. "No! We don't touch the artifact!" she barked.

He backpedaled and coughed. "I'm sorry you didn't make protocol clear," he mumbled. "Besides, why do I not get to touch the artifact, but you do?"

"What?"

"You're touching it." The stallion pointed to her hoof that was pressed against the surface. "Right there."

Sunny watched the heart begin to glow and pulse, faster and faster. "Oh, so I am."

A blast of light shot out from the heart, throwing her off and away the heart into a pale blue heap on the ground. She cried out and bit her lip as her hoof glowed bright blue and pulsed with energy.

Ponies gasped and shouted around her. They ran across the chamber away from her, leaving her alone next to the heart. With a grunt, Sunny raised herself to her feet and looked at the heart.

A beam of light extended from the top of the heart to the top of the chamber. Sunny watched as it expanded and rippled. It engulfed the heart and flooded the chamber in blinding light.

Then, the shaking began.

Sunny screamed and hugged the ground. The world convulsed and heaved around her. It spun and thrashed like a newborn child, tossing her in the air before slamming her back into the ground again.

She fought her way across the uneven ground toward the center of the chamber. Her legs threatened to buckle out from under her, so she crawled the rest of the way. The crystal heart spun in the air above her, surrounded by the beam of light.

Sunny grabbed on to a rocky spire and clung to it for dear life. She curled her body around the stalagmite and shut her eyes. She was yelling, but couldn't hear herself over the noise of the earthquake tearing apart the chamber.

Then, just as quickly as it had started, the shaking stopped.

A few spare rocks fell from the ceiling and hit the ground around Sunny's head. She stared at the crystal that drifted down to the ground. It touched a bare area of ground next to her and stood on a perfect point.

"What in hades just happened?" she muttered.

* * *

The first thing Police Sergeant Carpenter noticed when he woke up was a light fixture swinging on the ceiling above him. The fluorescent bulb flickered and cast a sharp glare on his cerulean coat.

He let out a groan, and the police officer rose to his shaky hooves. He shook off dust from his navy blue uniform and looked around. Slick, tiled floors were cast in a red glow from the hospital's warning lights. He could hear warning sirens going off all around Sunset General Hospital and shook his head.

The memories came slow to him. Carpenter had been sitting in the waiting room when the shaking started, then he remembered rushing to get to his wife in the maternity ward and then . . .

His eyes widened.

_Frankincense_.

The name of his wife spurred his memory back and he cantered down the hall once more. The heaviest shocks had hit before he had managed to find the room, leaving him directionless.

Carpenter's eyes scanned the rooms, looking for any sign of his wife. The burly stallion bit his lip. Each room looked identical to the last in his eyes, and he started to shake.

"Frankincense!" he yelled. "Someone, anyone, help! My wife's having a baby!"

No reply reached his ears. Carpenter briefly considered the idea that he might have been the only pony in the hospital to survive the quake, but quickly shook the thought away. His hooves echoed in an empty hallway as he ran toward the end of it.

Carpenter ran around the corner and nearly slammed into a group of nurses. They were clustered around an open door and peering inside. When he skidded to a stop in front of them, they all turned and stared at the newcomer.

"Oh thank Solaris," he gasped. "Can I have some help? Please, it's my wife! She's having a baby and—"

One of the nurses stepped forward. "Are you Sergeant Carpenter?" she asked.

He nodded and surged forward. "Yes, I am! Is that my wife in there? Is she alright?"

"I'm sorry, sir, but you can't go in there," the nurse began. "Your child had some, ah, unforeseen complications."

"Complications?" Carpenter exclaimed. "Like . . . like what? He's alright, isn't he? The doctor told us he was going to be a healthy little colt!"

The nurse put a hoof on his shoulder. "Your child is fine, Mr. Carpenter, but right now we're not sure—"

He didn't wait for her to finish. With the assurance that his little baby colt was at least alive, the police sergeant barreled past the gaggle of nurses and into the maternity room. The main lights were off, so the room was cast in an eerie red glow from the emergency lights in the corners.

Carpenter stepped around fallen IV stands and rolls of bandages. His wife lay on a gurney in the middle of the room, away from collapsible walls. Several doctors stood on the other side of the hospital bed, watching Carpenter but not moving to stop him.

The policestallion could see her teal mane matted to her head, his wife's light yellow coat streaked with trails of sweat. To the new father, though, she looked beautiful.

"Honey, honey, I'm here," he told her, standing by her side. "It's okay, I made it."

She smiled up at him and motioned to the bundle of swaddling clothes lying in her hooves. "This little one did too," she said. "I think he wants to see his daddy."

Carpenter bent down and smiled. His wife moved back some of the cloth covering the colt's face. When she did, the new father's expression of joy turned to surprise, then horror.

Sticking out of the colt's tan forehead was something he had only seen in fairy tales: a unicorn horn.


	2. Lost in the Supermarket

The cold windowpane of a creaky city bus felt cold on Starlight's head. Early morning light shone between towering glass skyscrapers clustered around downtown Gracia. The bus shoved its way through honking taxis and wayward tourists who managed to wander onto the road.

Starlight reached out an ivory hoof and pressed it against the frosted glass. She traced a little music note before drawing away. She smiled at her creation until the bus jerked to a stop and threw her forward into the back of the seat in front of her.

She grumbled and hauled herself back up. Her violet mane fell over her eyes, and she had to push it back behind her ears. Starlight hated riding the bus, but hated the subway more. Riding a clicking and clacking train beneath apartment complexes and thick skyscrapers wasn't her idea of fun.

The bus turned down forty-eighth street and sped toward a towering granite building. Sweeping columns held a red-tiled roof over carved stone steps that led up from the sidewalk. "_Gracia Museum of National History_," said the gold letters engraved in the building.

Starlight stared at it and groaned. When the bus stopped in front of the museum, she shoved her way to the front of the bus and out onto the sidewalk. Tourists crowded around her, and she had to push her way through them to reach the front steps to the museum. She took them two at a time up to the gold-tinged double doors.

She sprinted inside, her hooves clopping against the museum's smooth tiled floor. She passed by tapestries depicting wars and hunting, and weaved her way through a hall of panoramas detailing the various cities of the Republic of Teton.

A scale model of Gracia, the capital, stood out amongst the others, a sprawling mishmash of gray apartment buildings and colorful skyscrapers. There were models of the fort city Skyhall, built into the side of a mountain and overlooking Amperdam, the city on the river, and of Sundown, a sprawling metropolis in the desert flats.

Starlight passed by them without a second thought on her way toward the back hallway of the museum. She took a sharp corner and skidded to a stop at her familiar door, only to come face to face with her boss.

His eyes peered at her from his wrinkled, light blue face. "You're late again, Miss Starlight," he said. "The children you're supposed to be giving a lesson to are waiting inside, and getting quite restless."

"I know, Mr. Staten, I know," Starlight said. "It's just the bus this morning and the traffic—"

"No excuses." The aging museum curator sniffed. "You may be the daughter of my old friend, but I do not play favorites. Be late again this month and I will dock your pay again. Is that understood?"

"Yes, Mr. Staten."

"Good. Now, get in there and do your job, Miss Starlight."

Staten turned on his hoof and walked away, head held high. Starlight sighed and opened the door the museum's rear classroom. Officially an "Education Center," the goal was for Starlight to entertain the kids with history and keep them out of the hair of their parents.

As Starlight had found, keeping colts and fillies entertained with history wasn't an easy task.

The children watched her as she walked to the front of the white-washed room. They sat on a brightly-colored carpet, while she pulled out a stool for herself. She reached into a bookshelf on the wall and pulled out a picture book, one of her favorites.

"Hi, kids," she said in the cheeriest voice she could produce, "today we're going to learn about history! Doesn't that sound exciting?"

The foals kept quiet, just looking at her.

Starlight cleared her throat. "It's a lesson about the founding of this very city!"

She opened the book and began to read.

* * *

". . . and in 1812, after our war of independence against the Republic of Fiorza, the temporary capital of Applewood was burned down by retreating soldiers. So, instead of attempting to reconstruct the old city, the founders of the new Republic of Teton decided to move their capital to the land previously denied to them," Starlight told them, cracking a smile and making gestures with her hooves in an attempt to make the story seem more exciting.

"So, they moved the homeless ponies out to here and set right to work building this new city. They called it Gracia, as it was given to them by, according to the settlers, the Grace of Adana. Now, today in 2048, this city holds over ten million ponies!"

The foals _oohe_d and _aahed_ at the figure. Starlight grimaced when they showed more interest in the number than anything else. She ran a hoof through her mane, done up in a braid, and turned the page to reveal a simplistic drawing of Gracia at night. The fanciful picture of the city showed it glowing in a million electric lights. The kids smiled and clopped their hooves.

Starlight set the book back with the others once they had calmed down. She looked at the clock. It was nearly one o'clock, almost five minutes after their parents were supposed to pick them up. She groaned. If her gut feeling was right, Booker was late on his tour again.

One of the foals stuck her hoof in the air and waved it around. She didn't stop until Starlight sighed and called on her. "Yes, you had a question?" she asked.

The little filly stood up. "Could you read us another story?" she asked.

Starlight bit her lip. "Maybe," she said, "though it's just about time for you all to go . . . maybe something about Sundown?"

The girl shook her head. "No! Read us something about _magi_c!"

"Yeah!" one of the other foals cried. "About ponies who can use magic!"

"And fly!

"And have pictures on their butts!"

The children began to chatter amongst each other, and their high-pitched voices rang in Starlight's ears. She grit her teeth. Just about the time the foals got to the subject of whether flying or using magic was better, Starlight clopped her hooves together as loud as she could.

"Enough!" she cried. They quieted down and the attention fell back to her. "Those are all just _stories_," Starlight tried to explain.

"They're wonderful to talk about, but they're not real. This is a museum of _history_, which means it actually happened. Nopony has ever flown or used magic or had a picture on their flank." A chorus of groans met her and she sighed. "That doesn't mean stories are bad, but you have to remember what's real and what's not."

Luckily for her, Booker chose that moment to arrive with the parents at the end of the tour. The children went streaming out of the room toward their parents and left while chattering about what they had learned, most of which was what they had heard from other classmates instead of Starlight, of course.

Starlight glared at the lithe stallion. "Nice of you to finally show up."

"One of the old couples just wouldn't shut up!" he protested.

"Oh, like you're not late every time. You always just leave me here with . . . with them!"

Booker laughed and started to walk off toward his next tour group. "You know, for somepony who reads to foals all day, you don't seem to like them very much."

He was gone before she could get a word in edgewise, so Starlight just huffed and started rearranging the bookshelf. Oh, sure, like it was _easy_ telling kids stories about the Gold Rush out near Sethton when all they wanted to hear were stories about dragons and unicorns and ponies named after their destiny. Heck, at that age, she wouldn't have wanted to hear about that other stuff either.

Her eyes alighted on one of the books near the back of the shelf. _The Case for Celestia_. She smiled. Maybe she could spice up the next reading just a little bit. It was a Friday, after all.

Starlight grabbed the book just as another group of foals began to pile in and sit on the carpet in front of the reading chair.

* * *

It was the second Friday of the month: payday. After work, Starlight lined up with the other employees in front of a swivel top desk in the museum's back room. There, an ancient mare who looked to have been installed when the museum opened slid a check across the desk and let them go home. Starlight was behind Booker, as usual.

The line moved forward and Booker became next to receive his check. The mare across the desk glared at him from beneath her sharktooth glasses, but slid his pay across nonetheless. He took it in his hooves and sniffed it, then smiled at Starlight. "Smell that?" he asked. "That's the smell of the last paycheck before promotion."

"You finally got it?" she asked.

He nodded. "The decision's already been made. Starting Monday, I'll be coordinating all the tours instead of running them." He waved the check in the air. "Soon it'll be goodbye knock off pasta and hello discount pasta!"

Starlight laughed as he left and waved after him. Then, she took her place behind the desk. Though the little slip of paper was the cut the same size of Roger's, she couldn't help but see it as a tiny little thing. Perhaps it was because half of it would be used up before she could even cash it. Then, the rest would be gone to go to pay for her apartment.

She sighed, accepted the check, and walked past the desk. There was an old row of lockers by the exit door. Starlight reached hers and produced a pink wool overcoat out of it, which she threw over herself. The weather pony had said it was supposed to be chilly out tonight.

Most ponies didn't mill around the area very long, so Starlight found herself alone in the locker room. That was, until she felt a familiar, morose presence.

"I heard you did quite the job telling fairy tales today," a raspy voice said.

Starlight turned around to catch sight of Staten, still as old as ever. He looked at her through foggy glasses wrapped around a coat that had started to pale with the years. His aqua mane, too, showed some signs of aging. The grimace on his face, however, was as strong as ever.

"I just figured the children might like to hear some, uh, historical interpretations," Starlight said. "I mean, I thought you would be okay with it since we got that new exhibit . . ." Her voice trailed off and she gulped.

Staten sighed and shook his head. "I suppose if it doesn't stray from the records too far it, then it's alright," he said. He reached over toward a coat rack and pulled off a black windbreaker and matching hat. "Though, I trust that you will keep those stories at a minimum, Miss Starlight?"

She nodded. "Of course, Mr. Staten."

"That's what I like to hear." He coughed. "Oh, and would you remind your father that my offer to dinner still stands? He doesn't seem to have been returning my calls lately."

"I'll be sure to."

"You know, that offer extends to you, too," Staten said. "Outside of work, the daughter of an old friend is always welcome to dinner."

Starlight gave him her best smile. "I'll definitely think about it, Mr. Staten."

The curator gave her a small smile before heading out the door to brave downtown Gracia at dusk. Starlight sighed. Mr. Staten was enough on a normal day, let alone payday.

Starlight hurried to grab her things and whisked her way out the door. Soon she was lost in the crowds walking home from work and just another face among millions.

* * *

There was a small supermarket shoved between a laundromat and a pizza parlor just a block from her apartment. With her new check in her pocket, Starlight stopped in the squat concrete store to pick up a few things. Her growling stomach, though, called for more than a few things.

A bell dinged as the double doors slid open and she walked through. She took a basket from a station by the door and set out to prowl down the narrow supermarket aisles. Late in the evening, the customers had begun to thin out, so the little corner store was devoid of many customers other than her.

She took her time to pick out her items: pasta, fruit, and about half a dozen kinds of cheese. She rolled her eyes at the new "gluten-free" products that were being offered for all the ponies riding the wave of the latest diet craze. Sure, ponies were supposed to be herd animals, but Starlight preferred comfort foods that allowed her to lounge around on the couch after work.

As she placed the food in her basket, Starlight took a little time to breathe. There wasn't too much noise and she had the aisle to herself, so she closed her eyes and let herself get lost in the supermarket, if only for a moment. Until she opened her eyes again, she could forget about the stresses of her job and stave off what was waiting for her back home.

She tried to think about the icy-green waves that lapped at the rocky shore outside Gracia. To think about when her father had taken her there as a filly, and how she had dove off the rocks into the water. For a moment, Starlight was happy.

Then she opened her eyes.

With a glance around to make sure nopony had seen her, she walked up to the front of the store and placed her basket on one of the checkout counters. The cashier, to her annoyance, wasn't paying much attention. He, like everyone else in the store, was watching the teletube placed up in the corner.

Starlight couldn't hear what the reporter was saying, but she could read the words scrolling by on the bottom of the screen. Something about an earthquake out near Sundown. Nothing big, she supposed, but to her surprise it mentioned something about the IS.

She noticed for the first time that the idle chatter of the employees and customers in the checkout lanes was all focused on that one subject.

"I heard they're closing down the road," said one.

"Well of course they are; it's standard procedure," said another.

"No, no, no, not any roads. _Th_e road," answered the first.

"No, they wouldn't!"

"Already have. No traffic getting through the whole city. The IS be setting up checkpoints and everything. I have a cousin out in Amperdam and she told me the whole thing . . ."

Starlight cleared her throat to get the attention of the cashier in front of her. She glared at him, and tapped her hoof on the counter. To her, anything to do with Sundown was unnecessary: far-off concern. Not every pony saw it that way, to her annoyance.

The cashier scanned the items without taking his eyes off the tube. He shoved the items into bags and waited for her to pay.

Starlight pulled out her card from another pocket in her coat and gave it to him. She sighed to herself when somepony turned up the volume on the tube.

The cashier tapped her on the shoulder. "Ma'am?" he said. "Your card is declined."

Her heart sank. "Try it again," she said.

He swiped it through the machine again, then shook his head. "It's still coming up as declined. Is there any other way you could pay?"

Starlight took out her paycheck with a little reluctance and showed it to him. The cashier just shook his head and pointed to a sign taped to the steel register: _NO CHECKS_.

"But that's not fair!" Starlight cried. "How can you not accept checks?"

The cashier shrugged. "Too many bounced, I guess. It's not my decision. Now, are you going to pay with cash or another card?"

Starlight shut her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. _This isn't happening, this isn't happening . . ._

She distinctly remembered putting the rest of the cash she'd had on hoof into her account just a few days ago. One hundred rounders should have been more than enough for some groceries and a few snacks.

Then, she remembered.

Anger began to well up inside her. She wanted to scream. Her late insurance payment. A stupid envelope that she had left on the counter one day too late.

"Ma'am, we're going to be closing soon," the cashier said.

Starlight shook her head and began to walk away. "Take it," she said, "just take it. Take it all back."

A few ponies began to stare at her as she walked out of the store, but she returned the look until they found something else to gawk at. With a heavy heart and empty stomach, Starlight trotted out of the store and down the street back to her apartment.

* * *

Starlight walked down dirty and cracked sidewalks toward her home with her head down. The eyes of passing strangers all seemed to focus on her, silently judging while her empty stomach growled. She looked down and kept her own eyes on her hooves. One in front of the other, carrying her home.

Overhead, thunderclouds boomed and began to spill their cargo onto the city below. Fat droplets smashed into the ground around Starlight, and trickled down her neck. Ponies around her extended umbrellas into the sky, whose handles lit up with bright lights to help them guide their way.

Starlight ignored the rain and turned a corner onto a lonely sidestreet. A lamp post above her flickered on and off in the storm. Lightning boomed in the distance and Starlight picked up her pace. Her apartment building sat wedged between two others that looked just like it near the end of the block. Far removed from the glass skyscrapers and peace of downtown, Starlight's slice of Gracia was scrubbed over with dirt and grime.

Overhead, a police spinner flew by. Its twin rotors buffeted the ground beneath it while it scanned over the apartment complexes with a bright searchlight. Starlight watched it for a moment until it moved on.

The rain began to fall harder, and Starlight trotted down the sidewalk until she reached her apartment building. She noticed a few dark vans parked on the opposite side of the street, but soon turned her attention away. She cantered up the front steps and through the dingy lobby to a silver elevator on the other side.

Starlight leaned against the wall of the mirrored box. She rubbed her forehead and tucked her pink jacket tighter around her. The elevator took her up six floors before grinding to a halt on in a hazy hallway lit only by a window at the other end.

Starlight stepped out and her hooves slid over the worn maroon carpet. She walked down the hall to her apartment as she always did. Her eyes traced over the wallpaper while her mind drifted off to other topics. Her stomach growled and she thought about Mr. Staten's invitation to dinner.

Her hoof reached out to touch the door lever to her apartment . . . then she stopped. She looked closer, and her heart stopped. It was only barely visible, but her door was already open a crack.

The only key to the apartment was in her jacket pocket, so she started to back away. She kept her eyes on the door and moved toward the elevator. Then, the light above the elevator doors dinged, the car was riding back down.

A crash came from inside her apartment, and Starlight scrambled away. With nowhere else to go, she backed toward the window. Then a shout came from inside the apartment.

"She's outside!"

Starlight turned and ran to the window. She gripped the pane and slid it up just as she saw a dark figure emerge from her apartment. He turned toward her and yelled to his partner.

She didn't stick around to hear what he said. Starlight crawled out the window and landed with a soft thud on a rusty fire escape. She reached up and slid the window shut before running down the stairs.

The metal stairs creaked and groaned under weight, but Starlight didn't slow down. She could hear the glass breaking behind her and more yelling. Sweat ran down her forehead and mixed with the rain that poured overhead. She slipped on a bottom stair and nearly fell off the fire escape before catching herself against the railing.

Thunder boomed in the sky above.

The stallions above her closed in on her. They took the steps three at a time, jumping down the stairways in their pursuit. Starlight guessed they were only a couple levels above her by the time she reached the bottom.

She looked behind her once, then jumped down to the alley below. She hissed from the impact and pain shot through her legs. She didn't have time to think about that, however. Her mind ran on instinct.

She ran out of the alley just as the stallions got to the ground. She took a sharp turn and sped away from her apartment building. The pouring rain got in her eyes, blinding her. Lightning seemed to flash around her and the cars sped by at a dizzying speed. She could hear the assailants getting closer and closer, barging through the few ponies on the street with her. Soon, they would catch up.

She turned right onto another street in the hope she could find a place to hide in a crowd. But when she got around the corner, her stomach dropped. The entire street was empty. Not a car, not a pony, nothing.

Starlight sprinted down the street, but knew they would catch up to her soon. Their hooves all over her, grabbing her and forcing her to the ground . . .

A cry escaped her mouth when a strong hoof suddenly grabbed her. Instead of pulling her to the ground, though, she was pulled into a small side alley. The hoof shoved itself against her mouth to muffle her screams while the two stallions pursuing her passed by.

They yelled and called out to her. When they didn't notice her, they moved on and out of hearing range. Only then did the hoof come off her mouth.

She coughed and swung around to face whoever had dragged her into the alley. "Okay, what gives?" she growled. "And who are you?"

With a snort, Staten walked out of the shadows. He was shaking, and his eyes were bloodshot. "Starlight," he rasped, "I'm going to need your help."


	3. She's Leaving Home

Rain beat against plate glass windows that encased a small diner wedged between two office buildings a half dozen blocks from Starlight's apartment. She sat in a red leather booth scooted against one of the windows and watched cars splash through the street outside. A cup of coffee sat on the table in front of her, steam rising from the brown liquid.

A bell above the diner's front door dinged and Starlight's head shot up. She let out a breath when she saw it was Staten walking in. He shook drops of rain off his pale aqua fur and walked across the polished tile floor to the booth. He sat down with a heavy sigh and leaned his hooves against the tabletop.

"We haven't been followed, as far as I can tell," he said. "We should still stay on our guard, however. We can't stay in one place too long. The IS has their hooves all over this part of town."

Starlight shook her head. "I just, I don't get it . . . why me?"

Staten reached across the table and took her untouched coffee. He drank half the cup in one gulp before sliding it back over. "Because the government decided you're a liability. If you hadn't escaped, you'd be in a spinner bound for Lupine right now."

"Because . . . why? What, do I have any unpaid parking tickets that I don't know about?" She shook her head. "And what was that in the alley about you needing my help? What gives?"

Staten tapped his hoof against the table and looked out the window. A bolt of lightning flashed over the city, illuminating the apartment blocks and office buildings in white light for a moment. Thunder pealed a second later, rumbling over the city blocks.

"I got a call from my daugher shortly after you left the museum today. I think I told you about her? She lives out in Sundown." He shook his head. "Anyway, I got a call from her today. She was worried, she thought someone was coming for her, but she didn't say who. What she _did_ say, though, was what they were coming for: the crystal heart."

"Crystal heart?" Starlight asked.

"It's an artifact my daughter and her team found deep under the sands around Sundown. Your father and I had found inscriptions of the heart in our digs out in the Ayanmar Mountains, back in our heyday. Details and legends about its power, buried deep in ancient tombs and catacombs."

Starlight stared across the table at the older stallion. "So the government is trying to get to me because of some crystal at the bottom of a cave?"

"That crystal is an enigma, a legend . . . and nopony knows more about it in the entire world than your father and I. If the IS had taken you, they would have a bargaining chip if Noctilucent didn't want to comply."

"But if they couldn't catch me, then . . ." Her eyes widened. "The IS is going to come for my dad!"

She tried to shove her way out of the booth, but Staten held her back. His strong grip surprised her, and she was forced back down. She glared at him from across the table.

"Stop, there's no point to getting worked up," he chided. "They wouldn't be so foolish as to wait and see if they succeeded with you. Their agents were sent to his house at the same time, I'm sure."

"We can't just leave him there!"

"He. Is. Gone, Starlight," Staten said. "You would just add yourself to the list of prisoners if you tried to go save him, and then you wouldn't be useful to either of us."

"Useful?" Starlight snorted. "Since when have I been useful to you? We both know I got that job because of my dad. Why in Adana's name would you choose me over him?"

He sighed. "When I got back to my house, the IS was already swarming all over it. I got away unseen, but knew they would be coming after the both of you as well, so I had to make a choice . . . I chose you."

"But why? How am I useful to you?"

Lightning flashed outside, closer this time. The lights in the diner flickered overhead. Staten tapped his hoof the table and looked Starlight in the eyes. She felt like he was staring right through her, down into her mind.

"As long as you are free, your father still has hope. He'll stall and give misinformation to the IS for as long as he can, and buy time for me to get to Sundown. If I had saved him, he would have done nothing but try to save you from the IS, and we both would have wound up in the hooves of the government."

Starlight stared down at the even, brown surface of coffee inside the porcelain cup in front of her. Thunder boomed outside and the liquid rippled, sending tiny waves crashing against the sides.

"I just don't see the big problem here. So what if the government gets the crystal? How's it going to hurt anypony?"

"There are legends, dark legends, of events that transpire when the crystal is activated. A downward spiral of chaos and magic that can upturn the world. From what my daughter, Sunny, described, the process has already started."

He slammed his hoof on the table and a couple patrons across the diner stared. "We can't let the IS get to it. They'll seek it's power, and once they try to harness it, that will be end for all of us. Every last stallion, mare, and foal."

"And you want me to help."

"Like I said, as long as you're with me, we'll stay a step ahead of the government. We can do this, Starlight, but I need you."

Starlight took one more look at the older stallion, then sighed. "Beats rotting in a holding cell, I guess. Where do we go next?"

Staten slid out of the booth and stood up. "We go back to your parents' house. They'll already be taken, so the house should be clear. We'll get what we can for the journey, and figure out where to go from there."

"And how do you expect to get halfway across the city without being noticed?" Starlight asked, following him out the door and into the pouring rain.

Staten smiled. "The subway of course."

"Oh. Right."

She sighed and followed him toward a set of stairs that led down to the nearest station, gritting her teeth and wishing the whole night would turn out to be just another lousy dream.

* * *

Their silver subway train clicked down the tracks, sliding its way underneath the city. Starlight rested with her back against the back of a hard plastic bench seat. Staten sat beside her, his hooves on his lap. Besides them, there was only a single pony napping on the bench at the far end of the car.

Starlight stared out the window across the car from her and watched brick walls fly past as the subway trundled on. Her hooves rested at her side and her mane hung down over one eye. She didn't bother to blow it away, instead tucking herself further into her seat.

She had never liked the subway. Her parents had taken her on it when she was younger and it had frightened her. To be stuck underground in a train that was crowded with dozens of ponies would get her breathing hard if she thought about it too long. When it had come time to attend school, she had been more than willing to take the bus.

A light flickered overhead. Staten licked his lips and opened his mouth to say something, then seemed to think better of it and shut it again. Starlight did her best to ignore him. She could feel the questions welling up inside, but steeled herself from speaking. If she was going to focus on anything, it would be her parents.

The car hit a bump and Starlight knocked against Staten. She righted herself as quickly as he could and scooted away from him. "Sorry," she mumbled.

"It's alright," Staten replied. He took the opportunity and leaned a little closer to her. "You know, I'm sure your parents are alright."

"I don't remember asking about them," Starlight hissed. "And from the way you talked back in the diner, you didn't think that way, either."

Staten raised a hoof. "I'm just trying to reassure you—"

"Do I look like a little kid to you?" Starlight snapped. "I've been away from them for years. I don't need somepony to remind me my mommy and daddy are okay."

"Just trying to help." Staten sighed. "Your father and I were close, back in the day. I'm sure he told you about the digs we did out past Levan and elsewhere. Those trips were fruitful, but what we found were just . . . trinkets . . . at the time. A stone inscription of a dragon and a pony, things like that."

"So why'd you two ever drift apart?" Starlight asked.

"When my wife left and Sunny went off to college, I fell on hard times. I blamed everypony . . . including my friends. It wasn't a time I like to remember. I—"

Staten trailed off and looked down at his hooves. "I never went back. He offered me, I offered him, but . . . I just couldn't. Then this happened and I—."

"You came for me," Starlight whispered.

Staten nodded. "Your father would have gone to the ends of the world to find you and bring you home. If he couldn't do it, then I could."

Starlight looked away. "You should have saved him . . . I can take care of myself."

The train slid to a squealing stop at Fel Street Station. The granite station was lit by simmering fluorescent lights that cast it in a harsh glow. For all purposes, it was empty and devoid of life.

Starlight hopped off her seat and trotted out of the car onto the solid floor of the station. She made her way to the stairs leading back up to Gracia without a single look back at Staten.

* * *

Fel Street was like another world compared to the rainy morass that Starlight's apartment sat on. The street was straight and broad, and lined with wooden buildings that were three stories high at their tallest. The arched windows looked out on manicured grass lawns and trees that bloomed in the summer rains. Light came from bulbs burning in ornate lamp posts on the sidewalk rather than spinners flying overhead.

Starlight splashed through puddles on the sidewalk that still gathered in the same places that they had when she was a little foal. The gravel crunched comfortingly beneath her hooves and the air smelled fresh and clean. Despite the situation, she found herself smiling as she trotted down the street toward a blue house on the end.

She could hear Staten's clumsy hoof-falls echo behind her. He grunted as he tried to catch up to her, muttering curses under his breath. Starlight laughed to herself and kept ahead.

For a moment, it almost seemed like a silly little game she had played as a foal. Then she arrived at her house.

Starlight came skidding to a stop when she saw the front of her childhood home. The window that her father had fixed after a wayward ball had sailed through now lay on the ground, its frame broken and sagging. The mahogany door that she and her mother had painted together one cold November stood open, hanging on by its hinges.

Staten caught up to her and stood by her side, panting. When he saw what had been done, his breath caught and he tried to move toward Starlight. "I am so sorry," he began.

Starlight didn't hear him. Her eyes glazed over as she stepped up the front walk. She pushed open the door and found herself plodding through her own house like it was an alien planet. Everything was out of order. The furniture lay torn and on their sides. Vases were broken, pots were spilled, and her father's prized book collection lay on the floor like a pile of trash.

Tears welled up in her eyes. She stood in the middle of her living room, the one place she could call safe, and felt like a stranger. She fell in a heap beside the piles of books. Many had pages ripped out and spines bent. The ones under became a little more wet as tears ran down her face and dropped onto the pages.

She hadn't been on the best terms with her parents, not since dropping out of school, but to see the safest place in the world have its heart ripped out was too much for her. She stared into space and her ears started to ring.

Starlight was vaguely aware of somepony calling her name, but could only just make out the voice over the ringing. She didn't look up, however, until she felt a hoof on her shoulder.

"Starlight!" Staten was calling. "Are you okay?"

"What?" she asked.

"You zoned out," Staten said. "I know this is tough, and I'm sorry . . ."

Starlight shrugged off his hoof and stood up. "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine." She wiped at her eyes and sniffed. "I'm not stupid; they just took my parents to jail or whatever. It's not like they're dead."

"Yes, but you looked like you were taking this pretty hard—"

"I said I'm fine!" Starlight snapped. "Besides, why do you care so much? _You_ caused this."

"I did my best to find you before they got to you," Staten protested.

"I told you before, I'm not a little kid!" Starlight growled. "I can take care of myself. If you had gone to my Dad first, none of this would have happened."

"But you—"

"Save it. I'm going to go check out my room."

Before Staten could get in other word, Starlight turned, stomped up the stairs, and slammed the door to her room shut.

* * *

Staten watched her go and sighed. He would let her stew for as long as he could. She wouldn't be in any mood to help him at the moment.

He picked his way through some glass strewn about on the carpet and into Starlight's father's study lab. Noctilucent had been one to go to great lengths in keeping every damn surface that he had ever worked on spotless and in order, so to see the neat little office of his turned into a demolition zone pained Staten.

The modest chairs were upthrown, stuffing leaking out their sides, and the massive oak desk that he recognized from Radshapur had its drawers emptied and on the ground. The ancient tabletop was scuffed and chipped from hurried hooves that hadn't cared for its legacy.

Staten found what he was looking for in the middle of the room. It was an oil painting in a gold frame that Noctilucent had commissioned for his family. Even now, his steely blue eyes gazed up from the floor where the police had left it. It was, much to his relief, unharmed apart from being taken off the wall.

"I hope you'll understand, old friend," Staten said to the frozen relief of the square-jawed stallion. "You can take whatever the IS throws at you, but Starlight? No, she . . . she's not ready for that." He smiled a little. "Don't you worry now, I'll take good care of her."

Still smiling, he raised his hoof and brought it down against the glass. It shattered, allowing the aging stallion to rip a hole through the oil canvas and tear it out of the frame.

He grinned when he saw it. There, taped against the back of the frame, was a shiny compact disk. Staten wrenched it out and looked it over.

"Noctilucent," he said, "you were nothing but predictable. A good thing the police didn't bother to get to know you first."

He looked around and retrieved a small burlap sack from the corner. The police had emptied it out for him already, so Staten was able to place the CD inside without a problem. He grabbed some scarves and stuffed them in the sack for padding, then slung it around his neck.

Satisfied, he moved out of the room and closed the door behind him, as if to spare the carnage inside from the rest of the house. He heard nothing from downstairs, so he shook his head and started up toward Starlight's room. Under his breath, he rehearsed what he would say to her, an almost impossible task for what he needed her to know.

* * *

Starlight was laying on her old bed when the professor showed up again. Her room, like the others, had been ransacked. Unlike the others, it was hard to tell the difference from the state it had been in during her teenage years. The walls were still painted midnight blue and posters of bands and city fairs and shiny metal airframes stretched all over them.

Her bedspread was still the same tacky black rose spread that she had somehow convinced her mother to buy, but looked back on the decision with a small grimace. It was comfortable enough beneath her back, however, while she stared up at the spinning ceiling fan.

She had spent a lot of time in that position through the years. After a hard day at school or at her part-time job, she had lain there and let her thoughts slip away and carry her troubles with them. It had been where she'd laid the night after announcing to her parents that she was dropping out of Gracia U.

Staten knocked on the door. Starlight sat up and blinked a few times before settling her gaze on him.

He coughed. "May I come in?"

"Why not?" she said, laying back down. "It's not like nopony else has today."

Staten sighed as he stepped over an upturned CD rack, the discs scattered amongst the floor. He stood beside Starlight's bed. "We can't stay here for long. When the IS figures out you're not coming back to your apartment, they'll come back here."

"Let 'em." Starlight rolled over. "They've taken everypony else, so why not me too?"

Staten looked at her for a moment, then shook his head. In one swift motion, he grabbed the bed's comforter with his teeth and yanked back, flinging the blanket off the bed and spilling Starlight on the floor.

She yelped and held her head while she climbed back to her hooves. "What the heck did you do that for?" she growled.

"You don't get to make that decision," Staten snapped. "I let your father get captured so I could take care of you, like he would have wanted. It wasn't _my_ choice, but his. So you don't get to lay here and be captured with the rest of my staff."

"It doesn't even matter," Starlight shot back.

Staten walked up to her until their noses were almost touching. "I didn't choose you over your father so that you could get captured too. If you're sitting in an IS jail cell with them, you aren't worth anything. But on the outside, you can fight back. You can free them, you understand?"

Starlight stared at him, at his eyes flaming in anger, and nodded. "Yeah, I get it."

He threw open her closet and tossed a bag laying on the ground to her. "Good. Now, pack up some things and make it quick; we're leaving as soon as we can."

Starlight gulped, then did as she was told. She hadn't seen this side of the professor before. His eyes were crazed in anger and desperation. He looked at her like she was his last hope, and he would be damned if she didn't comply.

She stuffed a couple stray rounder bills and whatever coins she could find into the pockets of a pink coat from her closet, along with a few other valuables. Even her old music player. Then, she took what clothes she could fit in the burlap bag and slung it over her shoulder. She wrapped the coat around herself

When she looked up, she saw Staten in the hall, looking out a window to the street in front of the house. "Is there another way out that's not as noticeable?" he asked, turning away.

Starlight nodded and beckoned for him to follow. She led him to the small bathroom down the hall from her own room. There was a large, fogged glass window on the other side of the toilet. She reached up and undid the bolts keeping it in place, letting it swing open to reveal nothing but the night air on the other side.

She looked one last time at her room, surrounded by her old sanctuary, before dropping down to the terrace below and onto the soft grass of her backyard. Staten followed, albeit at a slower pace, and soon joined her.

There was a tall wooden fence around the perimeter of her parents' spacious backyard, and a gate near the back, built out of the same wooden slats as the rest. Starlight trotted over to it and let it open, careful to peek out before letting it swing away. There was a small road behind all the houses for cars, and it was deserted.

Staten caught up with her. "Nopony's around. Good," he said. He walked past Starlight and started up the street. "We'll need to move fast, though."

"Uh, professor, where are we going?" Starlight asked.

"Just a quick stop-over in Horizon, then out of the city. We should be on the road in just a few hours."

Staten continued on ahead, but Starlight stopped and looked back one more time. Her parents were gone and her home trashed . . . but even on a night like this, there was a faint glimmer of hope. Like the professor had said, she could fight back. She could free them. And, better, get back at the _IS_ and make them pay.

Starlight smiled and trotted after Staten.


	4. Like a Rolling Stone

Starlight and Staten took the journey to Horizon by hoof. The borough was on the edge of Gracia, near the industrial districts and dockyards. Starlight, even growing up on Fel Street, had heard the stories. The cutthroats, dealers, and smugglers had been regulars for the cautionary tales that parents told their foals.

Dingy tenement buildings leered above them, dark against the night sky. Most were sagging and aging at a rapid pace. None of the construction crews that kept the downtown modern and edgy came to the district. A few rusty cars rumbled down the narrow streets while ponies in long trench coats and low hats walked by, not looking anypony else in the eye.

Starlight became very aware of her bright pink jacket and kept close to Staten. The professor himself hadn't said much on their journey across the city, just looking back over his shoulder every once in awhile to confirm that she was still following him.

Eventually, they came to a stop under a neon sign that glowed in a language Starlight didn't know. Drops of rain hissed as they fell on it, though most of the storm had stopped some time ago. The professor leaned against the brick building and looked around.

"Why did we stop?" Starlight asked.

"Just trying to get my bearings," he answered. "It's been awhile since I was last here, after all."

"You've been to Horizon before?"

He nodded. "Once or twice. You would be surprised as to what kind of jewels can be found here if you look hard enough."

Starlight eyed the ruined buildings around her. "You'd think they'd stick out . . ."

Staten shook his blue-green mane, sending drops of water everywhere. More specifically, all over Starlight's face. She grimaced and spit out what flew in her mouth. "Are you done?" she grumbled.

"There's a bar not too far from here," he said. "We should be able to find a smuggler or the like there."

"Is it that kind of place?" she asked.

The professor smiled. "You can search across this entire planet, but nowhere else will you find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy."

"Oh." Starlight paused. "Can we go somewhere else, then?"

"Just keep your head down and you'll be fine," he told her, continuing down the street.

With a sigh, the young mare followed. They turned on a street lit up by more neon and gaudy signs advertising cheap mares. She shuddered a little. The decaying sidewalks, thankfully, were empty.

The only ponies they passed were two stallions garbed in black, matching outfits and smoking against the side of a strip club. Their eyes followed them as they went past, but didn't do anything more.

When they had passed by them, Starlight leaned in close and whispered, "What was with them?"

"IS agents," Staten said. "Not looking for us, most likely. They'll be there to watch out for the corner mares. Pay them no mind."

When Starlight looked back, though, they were gone. She kept close to the professor for the rest of the journey.

* * *

The bar turned out to be the imaginatively named "_Horizon Cantina._" It was a fat little building with a faded brick exterior and a single door that led further inside. The windows on the outside had heavy iron bars welded over them.

Staten strode in while Starlight did her best to disappear in his shadow. The interior was dark and hazy with cigarette smoke. The patrons didn't look up as they walked in, but kept leaning forward on the large bar in the middle of the room or in one of the booths.

They walked over to the far end of the bar where the smoke was heavier, but the ponies there were in lighter clothes and at least looked somewhat amiable. The professor took Starlight by the shoulder and looked her in the eye.

"I'm going to go look for transportation," he said. "You stay right _here_ and go nowhere else, understand?"

"I'm not a kid," she said. "I'm twenty-four."

He snorted. "Right, sure. Just don't go wandering somewhere."

Before she could say anything else, he left, leaving her to sulk. Starlight leaned against the dirty countertop of the bar and surveyed the place. She'd seen places with worse atmosphere on a few lousy dates, but the clientele here far more lacking.

There was a pony with an eyepatch and a row of empty shot glasses in front of him to her immediate right. He was shouting to a buddy next to him, even though they were less than a petra away from each other. A few patrons glared at him, but said nothing.

Starlight watched as the stallion eyed her and did his best to smile. She ignored him. After a minute of this, though, he grew bolder. He scooted down the bar and nodded to her.

"My friend likes you," he said.

"Well, that's great," Starlight said.

He coughed. "_I_ like you too," he said. "Let me buy you a drink."

She perked up a little at the thought. The only ponies who ever seemed to buy drinks for her had been the fat, nerdy types, and that was more for favors than anything else. Favors that she tried not to think about in civilized conversation.

Before she could decide, however, Staten returned.

"Ah, sweetie, there you are," he said, placing a hoof around her. He smiled at the stallion. "My daughter's just turned twenty today! Doesn't she just look _so _mature?"

The stallion returned the smile and grunted something in return before turning back to his friend. Starlight growled and threw off the professor's hoof.

"I had everything handled just fine," she said.

"Did you?" Staten leaned over and tapped an old corkboard hung up on the wall featuring a variety of wanted posters. One near the bottom had a yellowed picture of the same pony with the eyepatch, and a reward of one hundred thousand rounders for his arrest or death.

Starlight's eyes widened. "Oh."

"Anyway," he continued, leading her way, "I believe I have found us a transport out of Gracia. For a low price, too."

"Who is he?" Starlight asked.

"You'll see."

They started for the other side of the bar, but before they got too close, they found their way blocked by a crowd of ponies. Pushing their way toward the middle, they found that the crowd was ringed around two stallions sizing each other up and preparing for a fight.

One wore a black jacket over a long white shirt that complimented his wavy, copper mane and the roguish smirk that played host on his face. The other had on a plain maroon shirt and brown suspenders over his sandy brown coat and chocolate mane. He was smaller and more rugged, but in the way that a truck looked more rugged than a sports car.

They squared up and grinned at each other. The bartender, from within his labyrinth of mixes and cocktails, called, "Alright you two, break it up!"

The rogue looked up at the bartender while the truck took a swing at him. The blow connected with the stallion's right cheek, and he stumbled a bit before catching himself. When the truck came in for a kick, though, the rogue was prepared.

He thrust his shoulders into the truck's midsection, sending them both to the ground and with the rogue ending up on top. With a few powerful punches into the prone stallion, the fight was over. The patrons mumbled and went back to their drinks after rounders changed hooves.

"Well, at least he can fight," Starlight said.

"Were you watching the same fight I was?" Staten asked. "He just got his flank kicked."

She whirled around. "Wait, you're saying . . . we got the _loser_?"

"Evenin'," the stallion said in a husky accent, ambling up to them. He spat a mixture of saliva and blood on the wooden floor and grimaced at it. "Damn, must be losing my edge. You get the girl?"

Staten nodded. "Redington, meet my daughter, Starlight. Starlight, meet Redington, smuggler for hire."

The smuggler extended a hoof and smirked. "Call me Red."

Starlight stared at it until "Red" sighed and put it back down. "So you're going to be getting us out of the city?"

"Just as soon as we get on outta here," Red said. "You're looking at the best smuggler in all of Teton."

"Well, I hope your driving is better than your fighting," she said. "How much is my _dad_ paying you, anyway?"

Staten coughed. "I have half the money now in bonds and credit, and will give the other half to him when we get there."

"Speaking of which," Red said, glancing down at his bare hoof, "it's about time we got out of here. Not a good idea to stick around the late night crowd around here."

"Agreed," the professor said, making his way toward the door. Starlight followed with the smuggler in tow. He took a jacket from a coat rack by the door and put it on. It was an old airframe pilot's jacket, with the fluffy down collar around the neck and patches up and down the side. Starlight fought the urge to roll her eyes.

Once back outside, Red turned left. "There's a garage down this way," he said. "I've got the _Odyssey_ parked down there, gassed up and ready to go. Just follow me." He went on ahead of them, allowing Starlight to drop back with Staten.

"Why, again, can't we just take an airframe? Or even a train?" she asked.

"Security," he said. "The IS is going to be watching every station in and out of the city. The only places they can't watch at all times are the roads, and a smuggler is the only one who can get us through any checkpoints we might come across."

"Yeah . . . but him, really?"

"I have a good feeling about him," Staten said.

Starlight snorted. "Like that helps."

"Don't be so quick to knock it." He laughed. "I said the same about you."

* * *

A few blocks away from the bar, the trio arrived at a monolithic concrete parking garage that was at least five stories high at first glance. Starlight whistled as she craned her neck up. "Your car is here?" she asked.

Red nodded. "Parking's cheap here. Too bad about the neighborhood, though."

Sure enough, as they walked up the ramp to the first level of the garage, they witnessed a couple ponies scurrying away from a car with stolen wheels in tow. Starlight drifted closer to the professor.

The smuggler led them up the wide ramps of the garage, warning them to keep away from the cramped stairwells that any civilized pony would take. His voice echoed through the around the low-ceilinged tunnels.

After a while, Starlight's legs began to burn and she found herself wheezing under her breath. Staten didn't seem to be in much of a better shape, but they both managed to keep up with the silent smuggler.

Some time later, they arrived at the very top level of the garage that was open to the night air above. Moonlight guided them across the otherwise unlit surface until they reached the far end, near the edge of the platform.

Starlight stopped for a moment when it became clear exactly _which_ vehicle they were heading toward. Not a sports car, not an off-road utility vehicle, heck, not even a sedan. Instead, just a great, big . . . RV. The ugliest part of an ugly house put on four tiny wheels, painted off-white with a dull brown stripe going around it. The thing sagged and looked to be on the doorstep of death itself.

"What a piece of junk!" she cried.

"Hey, this piece of junk has gotten me from Sethton to Gracia and back," Red snapped, whirling around. "She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts. I've made a few special modifications myself. But, we're a little rushed, so if you two will just get on board . . ."

He made a scene of opening the thing's door and bowing for Starlight and Staten to get on. Before she did, Starlight noticed the name _Odyssey_ etched into the side of the RV in sloppy red paint. She rolled her eyes.

Red tried to put a hoof on her shoulders and help Starlight up, but she threw him off and got in the vehicle by herself.

Inside, there wasn't much to see. There were two plush seats in the front for a driver and passenger, a recliner to one side of the midsection, and across from that, a small kitchen table with wraparound couch. A bathroom near the back and a door leading to what Starlight assumed would be a bedroom completed the look. Starlight wrinkled her nose and took a step back from the whole thing.

"Where are these 'modifications' you were talking about?" she asked.

"Hey, I know she's rough on the inside," Red said, "but under the hood, she is one pretty lady."

"Sure." She sighed and shifted her bag to her other shoulder. "Is there at least somewhere I can put this?"

Red cocked his head toward the bedroom. "Throw it back there."

Starlight, grumbling the whole way, walked on the thin carpet toward the rear of the RV. She refused to even think of calling it the _Odyss__ey_; it wasn't deserving of such a name.

She opened the door to the bedroom and prepared herself for the worst. To her surprise, however, she found that the back bedroom was clean, if only because it was so sparse. Between two whitewashed walls were only a bed and a nightstand with a lamp and alarm clock on it, making the room the first part of the RV acceptable to her senses.

There was a sliding window at the back overlooking the city below the parking garage, and Starlight took the opportunity to look out it after setting her bag on the bed. The lights of downtown Gracia shined over the dullness of Horizon and reminded her that the city wasn't always bad.

That idea was cut short, however, when she looked down. At the bottom of the parking garage were four police cars, their lights flashing in the gloom. They paused for a second, then started up the ramp.

"Uh, guys?" she asked, emerging from the bedroom. "Is it usual to have police come around here?"

"No, they usually stay away from these places to keep all the criminals contained or whatever," Red said. "Why?"

"Well, they're here now, and in force."

Staten, sitting in the passenger's chair, started. "It must be the IS," he muttered, then turned to the smuggler. "How fast can you get us out of here?"

"Woah, woah, you didn't say anything about being wanted," Red said. "I don't do fugitives. Especially not for the money you gave me."

The professor shook his head. "I'm afraid you don't have a choice," he said. "This isn't just the regular police, but Intelligence Service agents. They're going to seize this RV of yours too, and I don't want to imagine what you've hauled in _this_ thing."

Red opened his mouth, then shut it and thought for a second. Without a word, he stuck a key in the ignition and started up the RV. The engine sputtered and coughed for a moment, then roared to life.

"You two might want to buckle up," he warned.

Staten did as he was told, but when Starlight looked down at the other seats, she noticed none of them actually had a way she could restrain herself. In the end, she sat behind the kitchen table and hoped she could hold on.

The smuggler backed out of the parking space and set the RV in gear, heading down the ramp through the garage. The air seemed to stop moving inside the RV. Everypony clutched their seats and tried to look calm.

It didn't help that the farther they went inside the parking garage, the lower the ceiling became until the top of the RV almost scraped against it. Still, the ride was normal until they got to the third level. Driving up on the opposite side of them were three cop cars with big searchlights. They were shining them into every vehicle in sight.

"Get down!" Red hissed.

Starlight threw herself down below the table and Staten ducked underneath the console. Red drove right on by the cop cars, keeping a neutral expression on his face. Even though his hooves started to shake, the police paid the RV no attention and let it pass.

There was an audible sigh of relief from the all three of the ponies in the RV once they had gone past. Red accelerated a little bit and zoomed down the ramps toward the exit of the garage.

Starlight watched out the front window for signs of an empty road ahead and freedom, but her heart sank when they came in sight of the exit. Two police cars guarded the entrance, and four stallions stood around them. They stared at the oncoming RV through reflective sunglasses, and held up their hooves to stop.

"What do we do?" she asked.

"The only thing there is to do," Staten said. "Go on through it."

Red smirked. "I like the way you think, old stallion."

He slowed the van down until he was almost at a stop near the exit gates, but then, when the officers approached the RV's door, the smuggler slammed on the gas and drove right through the police cars. The bulkier RV's front smashed aside the cars with a grinding and crunching sound of steel on steel.

The surprised police officers jumped out of the way and the trio in the RV were free on the open road. Red gunned it down the street toward the highways leading out of the city.

"Starlight, go check for followers," Staten instructed. "I have a feeling we're not out of this yet."

She scrambled into the bedroom and peaked out the rear window. Sure enough, flashing lights were coming from the parking garage. "They're on to us!" she yelled back.

She was thrown off her hooves and fell onto the bed when the RV lurched forward. Instead of falling onto a soft mattress, however, whatever she hit felt solid and hard. Curious, she threw off the blanket to find that the center of the mattress had been hollowed out.

Inside, there were a variety of weapons ranging from pistols to rifles and everything in between, including a dozen or so grenades. There were also piles of ammo for all of them.

Starlight's eyes widened as she looked at one that she thought to be a folded-up anti-material rifle. Before she could say anything, she was thrown against one wall when Red steered the bulky RV around one corner.

A grenade flew through the air towards her and Starlight cried out. She caught and bounced it on her hooves before she realized the pin was still in. She let out a sigh of relief. Then, the RV turned again and Starlight slammed against the bed.

To her horror, she looked down and realized that, somehow, she had managed to wrench the pin out in the last turn. She clutched the grenade to her chest to keep the lever from extending while she looked around for a place to put it.

Her eyes alighted on the window at the back of the RV.

While the smuggler continued to swerve the vehicle in and out of traffic, she scrambled up on the bed while keeping the grenade against her chest. She hung on to the edge of the window before wrenching it open.

The RV turned again and Starlight's heart stopped as she lost control of the grenade and watched the lever extend out. Reacting as fast as she could, she grabbed it out of midair and slung it out the open window.

Outside, the grenade landed on the street just before the lead cop car that had been following them drove over it. The grenade exploded and sent the vehicle spinning out of control until it stopped, facing sideways and blocking the road. The cars that had been following behind it slammed into the unfortunate officer, further blocking off the road.

Red let out a whoop. "Great shot, kid, that was one in a million!"

Starlight let out a sigh and laid back down on the bed while the RV climbed up a ramp and onto one of Gracia's outgoing highways.

* * *

Some time later, as they passed over the suburbs that lay in the swampy grasslands surrounding Gracia, Staten stepped into the bedroom.

"You did good back there," he said.

Starlight laughed. "An accident, I can assure you."

"Even so, we are now on our way without the _IS_. We might just be able to make it after all."

"Yeah, I guess," she said. "Where are we going, anyway?"

"To Serenity Valley," he said, "and the cities of Skyhall and Amperdam. I believe you're familiar with them."

Starlight raised an eyebrow. "That's a long way."

"Yes, but we'll make it one way or another," the professor said. "We have to. Now, would you like to come to the front of this vehicle and watch as we get on the Red Road for the first time?"

Starlight nodded and followed him up to the front seats. Looking through the massive front windows, she watched as the highway climbed up a hill and merged with other freeways and sideroads from all over the Greater Capital Area to become the Red Road, the massive highway that connected Teton from coast to coast. She had read about it in books before, but never actually seen it.

They crested the hill and Starlight's breath caught in her throat. There, on the other side, was the massive raised highway that stretched on toward the horizon. Cars of every size and make plowed the dozens of lanes on each side in a never ending flow of traffic. Streetlamps as tall as the parking garage lined it and lit up the boggy surface that had worn black over millions of tires.

Far off in the distance, over grassy knolls and rolling hills that marked the outer reaches of Gracia, the sun had begun to rise.

The _Odysse__y_ drove on toward it.


	5. Have A Cigar

Sunny leaned her head against the back window of the government car and watched it drive past the Sundown Oasis. The massive, spindly dome of steel and glass soared over the city's primary lake and the grass around the edge to keep it safe from the outside desert and allowed the ponies of the city to cultivate it. It was Sundown's biggest tourist attraction and Sunny had walked through it a few times herself.

The IS motorcade moved on past the Oasis and through downtown Sundown, beneath the watching eyes of a row of skyscrapers adorned in lavish ornamentation around sharp, geometric edges. Sunny didn't have much of a choice but to look out the tinted windows, as she was squeezed into the back seat of the sedan with two other government ponies in tacky suits. A fourth sat in the passenger seat next to a uniformed driver.

"Are we there yet?" she whined. "I've got classes tomorrow and I haven't even started writing my lecture yet."

"You will be taken to the Sundown Branch of the Intelligence Service and held there for an undetermined amount of time," the agent in the front seat, who Sunny now realized was a mare, told her. "No further questions will be answered at this time."

Sunny crossed her hooves over her chest. "You all have the nerve to drag me away from my dig site in front of all my colleagues like a common criminal and don't even have the decency to tell me what all of this is about."

"If we deem you fit to know, then you will be informed once we reach the Sundown facility," the female agent answered. "But until then, _no questions_."

Sunny grumbled and sat back in her seat. Outside, the car left downtown behind and passed into the expansive suburbs that ringed the business districts. Little clapboard houses were done in earthy tones and had rocks for lawns instead of grass to preserve water.

Ponies walked along the sidewalks with umbrellas and floppy hats to avoid the afternoon sun in what was turning out to be a particularly hot summer. At the moment, though, Sunny envied them and their ability to walk around unmolested by the likes of the IS.

The row of four black government cars turned down a side road that was lined by small businesses and a shopping mall. To Sunny's surprise, they turned in, not to some monolithic building, but to a small parking lot in front of a low-slung adobe building that lacked any decoration besides a sign that proclaimed, "_Teton Intelligence Service - Sundown._"

The four cars parked in a semicircle around the front steps and the doors were opened in a flurry of movement by agents who scrambled to get their passengers out. Sunny hadn't seen them take anypony from the dig site with her, but there was a stallion in a police uniform being pulled out of one of the cars, and a mare out of the other. She was placed in a shiny metal wheelchair with a bundle of clothes in her lap. When the bundle began to cry, Sunny's eyes widened.

"You are to follow us into the station," the female agent said. "Any deviation from that action will be treated as resistance of arrest and punished as such. Are we clear?"

Sunny said nothing and fell in line behind her. They marched her up the concrete steps and through glass double doors into the inside of the building.

The interior of the office was taken up by a number of desks scattered around the room. Various agents sat at them with collars undone and sleeves rolled up while the whirring of electric desk fans filled the room. Light got into the room through half-open blinds, while the overhead lights were switched

One of the agents near the door—a copper-colored stallion in a white, button-up shirt—stood when Sunny's group walked in. The other ponies in the room were quick to follow suit.

"What's going on?" he asked in a gruff tone.

"Ah, you must be Agent Nightcall," the female agent said. "I am Agent Flower from the Intelligence Service Homeland Division, and we have been instructed to secure these . . . ponies of interest . . . by order of the state and bring them here for examination and questioning."

Nightcall leered at her. "Why was I not informed of this?" he asked.

"The information we were given was highly sensitive and not confirmed until mere hours ago," Flower explained. "You will be give a full debriefing once you have secured your prisoners."

"Prisoners?" The male agent stared at the group. "_These_ are your prisoners?"

"Yes, and we will need a necessary facility to house them," the other agent replied, then sighed and looked at the foal wrapped in swaddling clothes in the hooves of its mother. "They may be taken to a more . . . accommodating . . . interrogation room if you so choose, however."

"Right." Nightcall led them past overflowing desks and the scraggly-looking agents who stared as they went by until arriving in a plain, concrete hallway in the rear of the building.

The agent took out a silver key from his pocket and opened a wide metal door to a sparse, white interrogation room. It had a one-way mirror that took up all of one wall, a rickety wooden table, and some equally unstable-looking chairs scattered around it.

Sunny and the police officer were marched in while the mare with the foal was wheeled in. She kept a stony glare on Agent Flower. Nightcall nodded to them, then shut the door behind them with the audible sound of the lock being turned.

With that, they were alone in the room. Sunny sighed and slumped into one of the chairs while the police officer followed suit. The mare in the wheelchair sat, cradling her child in her hooves, and didn't look at the either of them.

After a moment, the officer took his off his service cap and scratched at his indigo mane. He seemed to realize, for the first time, that Sunny was there too. He smiled a little. "What are you in for?" he asked.

She snored. "I wish I knew. Do you? Being with the police and all . . ."

"Nope, not a thing," he said. "Name's Carpenter, by the way. Sergeant Carpenter, Sundown PD. The pretty mare there is my wife, Frankincense."

"Sunny Sky, Professor of Hippology, University of Sundown," she said in return, nodding. "I am sorry to see the two of you put in here with a kid so young . . ."

"Born today," Frankincense muttered. "And they almost _took_ him from me."

Sunny turned in her chair to look at her, but the new mother was back to staring at her foal. The little pony made the occasional cooing sound, but was otherwise quiet, for which Sunny was thankful.

"When the_ IS_ showed up, we didn't know what to think," Carpenter explained. "They came into the room and dragged us out of there. They tried to separate us but, well, my wife talked them out of it."

Sunny grimaced and tapped a hoof on the table, which groaned in protest. "Right, but what would they want with the three of you? Especially a police officer, because isn't the police supposed to work with the Service?"

"We knew something was strange when he was born, but for them to just show up like that . . ." Carpenter said.

"Wait, hold on, what was strange when he was born?" Sunny asked. "Was it some kind of defect?"

"He's not defected!" Frankincense growled from her wheelchair. Even with her mane still clinging to her face and massive bags beneath her eyes, her expression was enough to give a trained soldier pause.

Carpenter leaned closer. "He was born with, well, an abnormality," he whispered.

"What sort?" Sunny asked. "I'm in my university's Hippology department, remember. These things are what I live for."

"Well, you see—" he paused, then gulped. "Our son was born with, well, a horn."

"A horn?" Sunny repeated. "A horn. Like, magic and rainbows type of horn? Like, from all the stories and myths type of horn?"

Carpenter nodded.

Sunny sat back in the chair and let out a breath she hadn't known she had been holding. Vestigial horns weren't quite unheard of as far as birth defects went, but this was the first she had heard of a government taking an interest in the child. Especially so soon after it had been born.

She turned to the mother. "Frankincense?" she asked in a soft tone. "Could I, maybe, see your child?"

She hugged the baby closer to her chest. "What for?" she snapped.

"Your husband tells me the baby was born with a certain, ah, trait. I'm from the Hippology department at Sundown U; I specialize in these sorts of things." The mother hesitated for a moment, so Sunny added, "I can use my professional opinion to sway the agents that nothing is wrong, but to do that I'll need to see the child."

Frankincense glared at her, but after a moment, sighed, and let the lanky professor walk over by her side. Frankincense cleared away the bundled blanket around the child's light brown head. Its wide blue eyes stared back up at Sunny with wonder and amazement while its little mouth turned in a smile.

Sunny couldn't help but smile back a little, even as she examined his forehead. When Frankincense took away the blanket covering _that_ spot, the teal mare gasped. There, on the baby's forehead was a thick, spiral horn. Not a fleshy pouch of skin like the other cases had been, but a _real horn_.

"What, is something wrong?" Carpenter asked, springing from his chair.

"No, no, your son is perfectly fine," Sunny said, "but this is something that I haven't ever seen before."

Below her, the little foal cooed and waved one little hoof up at the adults above him.

* * *

Special Agent "Night" Nightcall of the Teton Intelligence Service led Agent Flower away from the interrogation room and back toward his desk in its solitary position at the front of the spacious main room. The desk, which he had inherited from the previous station manager, was chipped and stained from its years of service, but still clung to usability.

Night dropped in his padded swivel chair and cleared the papers and styrofoam coffee cups off the center of his desk with a sigh. He watched Agent Flower, who regarded him with an apparent disinterest.

"Okay, so spill it," he said. "What's HQ want with some bookworm, a cop, his wife, and their kid? They don't exactly scream 'national threat' to me."

Agent Flower leaned against his desk and raised an eyebrow. "What this Service regards as a 'national threat' is hardly up to you, is it, Agent Nightcall?"

"Spare me the official bullshit," Night said. "I just need to know what's going on."

"We were called out to assist in any way we could with earthquake relief this morning," Flower began, pulling a small order form out of her suit pocket. "While covering evacuation from the afflicted areas via the Red Road, we received orders to seize these ponies of interest and bring them to the nearest Branch for containment and interrogation. That's all I know."

Night grit his teeth. "I don't like this; Lupine Falls knows more than they're telling us. Did they order you to bring in anything else?"

"Just a big crystal from a dig site outside the city," Flower said. "It's shaped like a big heart. Fancy, but the crystal quality is too poor to be worth much."

"So that's what they give us, then." Night shook his head and leaned forward in his chair. "I can't interrogate them in this sort of position. Hell, _what would I even say_? I don't know anything, and you don't seem to have much of a clue either. What do we tell them?"

Flower sighed. "Let's just keep them as comfortable as we can and prevent anything drastic from happening." A ghost of a smile appeared on her face. "We have a new mother in there; we don't want to piss her off."

"Right." Night nodded and picked up the bright red phone on his desk and held the receiver to his ear. "I'm going to call Lupine Falls and see if I can't get _something_ out of them. You get back in the room and keep them calm. Bullshit as much as you can. You're in my department now, so get going."

Flower hesitated, then did as she was told, scurrying off toward the back room without a word.

"And somepony around here get that new father a damn cigar!" Night barked.

* * *

A couple hundred petramin inland from Gracia, at the peak of a highway that looped off the Red Road, sat Lupine Falls. Amidst a vast sea of impenetrable forest was a town of simple brick buildings clustered around monolithic factories that belched smoke toward the cloudy skies above.

It was an insignificant city of less than one hundred thousand, save for one defining feature: a massive campus that ran from the hills south of the city and stopped at the first row of houses. Featureless concrete buildings that extended three stories above and four stories below ground marked the headquarters of the Teton Intelligence Service.

Back away from the town, on a hill that was hollowed out and stuffed with offices and personnel facilities, stood a small tower that belonged to only one pony. Some said she was as powerful as President Morrel, though others insisted it was she who had started the rumor in the first place.

Whatever the truth, it was undeniable that Director General Bilhaus Haze, known to her minions only as Director B, was the queen of Lupine Falls.

Atop the reinforced concrete tower, above the hidden networks of air-to-ground missile batteries, was an office with a single window at the top. A pony looking out of it could watch the vast forest pitch and bank until it smashed against the mountains that rose in the west, their rocky peaks capped with ice year round.

As she often did, Bilhaus enjoyed the view from her plush, high-top chair spun around to face the window. A small glass of brandy sat on the glass top of a massive oak desk that dominated the rear of her office. The sun had peeked over the tops of the mountains just minutes ago and bathed the forest valley in tinges of copper and gold that marked a new morning.

It also marked the fourth consecutive morning she had spent in her office. She yawned and took a sip of the brandy. It went unnoticed down her throat, but slammed into her empty stomach like a brick.

The azure-colored mare growled and held her stomach for a moment before it settled back down. Satisfied, she pushed a lock of her ghostly white mane over her ear and tried to enjoy the view for a few more minutes before the rest of the IS caught up to her.

A red button on her desk phone lit up and began to buzz. The Director sighed, then spun her chair around and pressed the button.

"Yes, what is it?" she snapped in her usual haughty tone.

The voice on the other end hesitated, as most did when speaking to her. "The suspects we brought into custody have all been flown into our holding facility," the little black box told her. "The one you wished to speak to, one, uh, Noctilucent, is being escorted to your office as we speak."

"Good," Bilhaus said. "Who is the escorting agent?"

"Agent Fresco, as you requested."

Bilhaus smiled. "Just checking. Report back if there are any complications, otherwise allow them access to my office."

She switched off the phone before whoever it was working the desk could thank her for her orders. She rolled her eyes and pulled another bottle of alcohol from the bottom drawer of the monolithic desk. If there was anything the unruly thing was good for, it was storing alcohol; her predecessors had made sure of that.

Bilhaus turned her chair until it faced the mahogany double doors, far at the end of the room. There was a portion of tile leading from the doors up to her desk that was painted red, as opposed to the uniform black found in the rest of the cavernous office. She had had it repainted so that, by tricking the eye, it appeared that the room widened and her desk got bigger as ponies approached, even if the only thing that changed was the width of the red path. It had been the very first thing she had changed in the office after assuming the Director's position.

The doors slid open with a soft hiss against the glossy tile and two ponies stepped through. The familiar sight of the grey and black-spotted Senior Agent Maxis Fresco was enough to set Bilhaus at ease. The newcomer, however, kept her from any thought of relaxation.

Standing taller than Fresco by half a head, the ivory pony with the inky black mane marched beside the agent without missing a step, even as he approached one of the most powerful mares in the country. His icy blue eyes bore into Bilhaus.

Their footfalls echoed through the empty office that extended far above them. Light streaming in from the windows behind the Director cast the two in an orange glow. They came to a stop in front of the desk and stood before her. There were no chairs, and the desk was angled upward to complete the feeling that Bilhaus sat above where they stood.

She smiled at them.

"How was the flight in?" she asked, her voice echoing around the bare office. "Those spinners can be rough coming over Lupine Falls, but, unfortunately, we had no time to arrange for airframes to bring you here."

The stallion, Noctilucent, looked up with a snarl on his face. "You act like I was brought here as a guest, not as a prisoner," he said.

Bilhaus smiled. "But you _are_ here as a guest," she said. "If you notice, we have not bound you. You are free to leave at any time."

Noctilucent didn't budge.

"What?" she asked. "Do you not trust me?"

"I know your kind," he growled. "You're not letting me go that easy."

The Director turned in her chair and picked up her glass of brandy. "I assure you, it _is_ that easy, Mr. Noctilucent, but the effects it may have upon you could be . . . considerable."

Noctilucent eyes narrowed. "You've already taken my wife and I, what else is there?"

"Mr. Noctilucent," Bilhaus asked with a smirk, "when was the last time you were in contact with your daugher?"

"So you have her too," Noctilucent muttered. "What, is that it? You're going to keep me here by threatening her?"

Bilhaus held up a hoof. "There is no need to get upset," she said. Behind her, the rising sun reflected off the glass window and appeared to project a halo of light around her. "We do not, at this time, have possession of your daughter. Which brings me to the purpose of you being brought to me."

She sighed and took a sip of brandy. "I am a busy mare, Mr. Noctilucent. This country expects _me_ to have my eyes and ears on every square petrabit of Teton without considering that such an effort would require the resources of every nation on this planet. With the recent events in the city of Sundown, my agency is spread thin, and some individuals have slipped through our grasp."

"You mean my daughter," Noctilucent said.

"I mean the stallion who has absconded with your daughter," Bilhaus snapped. "You are familiar with Professor Staten, I would assume. Your former archaeological excavation partner and current curator for the Gracia Museum of History and Science."

Noctilucent raised an eyebrow. "Are you implying that my former partner has kidnapped my daughter?" he asked.

"I would not go so far as to call it 'kidnapping,'" Bilhaus said. "My sources tell me that she was seen willingly fleeing my agents with Staten. It is my belief that he has fooled your daughter into following him."

"But why?"

Bilhaus shook her head, her ivory mane flopping about. "That is unknown at this time, which is why we have called you in. If you assist us in capturing Professor Staten and bringing him in for questioning, then you, your wife, and your daughter will be free to go."

Noctilucent smirked. "No strings attached?"

"No strings attached."

"So let's say you're telling the truth," Noctilucent said. "How am I supposed to track down an old buddy of mine if I have no idea where he's going or why?"

Bilhaus motioned to Agent Fresco, who marched back down to the doors and walked out, shutting them behind him. Once he was gone, Bilhaus reached under the desk and flipped a switch. She grinned and watched Noctilucent's eyes widen when the smooth wooden surface of her desk lit up into a tabletop touch screen that displayed a glowing map of the entire country.

It had been one of the more recent installments to the room, and by far her favorite. No paper meant a clean and more impressive room, as well as a toy to astound visitors with. With that in mind, she had been quick to master it.

"What you are about to see is known only to the topmost individuals in the country," she said. "Revealing this information to anypony except official personnel is constituted as an act of treason against the Republic of Teton and punished as such. Am I understood?"

Noctilucent looked her in the eyes and nodded.

"Good," she said, then touched a button on the map that zoomed in to show a holographic representation of the city of Sundown and the desert around it. "Yesterday morning, as I'm sure you're aware, an earthquake struck outside the city of Sundown, resulting in minor damage to the city and no loss of life." On cue, little red warning signs appeared around the afflicted areas of the city.

"What few know is that, while there is, in fact, a fault line that runs near the mountains north of the city, the quake did not originate there." A red line appeared on the map, not north of the city, but east, out among the open sand. "You may recognize the source of the epicenter as the same area in which your digs with Professor Staten took place, which were continued by his daughter and the university"

Bilhaus switched the map off and brought up a series of digital pictures. Most of them were taken years before, but a couple were much more recent.

She tapped one of the older ones, which had a picture of a large stone tablet containing a rough inscription of a heart on it. "You may recognize this as one of the pieces you and Staten uncovered from the Sundown dig, which was donated to the University of Sundown where his daughter teaches."

Bilhaus brought up another image of the same heart, but instead of a picture on a tablet it was a real, physical crystal. Rougher around the edges than on the tablet, but very real. "What you may not know as the recent excavation of the same piece by Staten's daughter."

Noctilucent shook his head slowly. "No, no, they couldn't, it's . . . it was just a legend. How could they—"

"It was being kept under wraps, only just shown to the investors yesterday. The finding of an old artifact is monumental, of course, but not in any way that anypony could have predicted."

"What do you mean?"

Bilhaus switched back to the map of the city, which now displayed little blue columns that rose at various heights. Around the dig site and the hospital, they were tens of times higher than anywhere else.

"Radiation monitors in the city, left over from the tests farther east sixty years ago," she continued, "picked up massive fluctuations shortly after the earthquake. Though it is perhaps reasonable as to why the artifact was affected, given the circumstances, the event at the hospital is much more . . . perplexing."

The map switched to images of a newborn foal, wrapping in swaddling clothes and lying in his mother's hooves. Noctilucent craned his neck for a better look, and let out a small gasp when he saw the horn on its forehead.

Bilhaus flipped the screen off and it returned to its default state of appearing to be a normal wooden desktop.

"We seized Staten's daughter along with the piece, but we believe she was able to get a message to her father before being taken," Bilhaus said. "Our best guess is that Professor Staten successfully convinced your daughter to come with him to Sundown and fled Gracia before agents could apprehend him. That task, as he travels out of our thinning net, falls to you."

Noctilucent scratched his head. "But why does he have to be caught?" he asked. "What's he done wrong?"

"Nothing, so far," Bilhaus said, "but it's the potential. Since its activation this morning, the radiation levels surrounding the artifact have not gone down like the child, and have instead kept a steady outpouring of radiation in the surrounding area equal to standing at the blast zone of a megabomb. Yet, reports indicate that no harm came to the unshielded civilians who stayed within the vicinity of the artifact for hours."

She leaned back in voluminous chair. "You can see why the Intelligence Service does not wish for power of this magnitude to fall into the wrong hooves."

Noctilucent nodded. "And you will allow me to bring my daughter home safely?"

"You have my word."

He sighed. "I don't really have much of a choice, do I?"

"I wouldn't like to think so, no," Bilhaus said.

Noctilucent thought for a moment, then nodded. "I'll find him, for my daughter and to keep the artifact safe. Don't expect me to be your henchpony."

"Of course I wouldn't," Bilhaus said. "I have Agent Fresco for that. Meet him out in the hallway and he will escort you to the loading station. From there, you will track Staten from the outskirts of Gracia: his last known location."

The stallion turned and walked back down the long path to the door. He kept his head down and did not not look back at the Director. His heart beat faster. He knew the potential of the heart, knew the power . . . and could only wonder if Bilhaus did too. For the sake of Staten and his daughter, he hoped not.

Director B smiled at the back of Noctilucent's head and turned around again in her chair to look out her window.

She reached behind her and tapped a button on the phone.

"Yes, Director?" came the voice.

"Make sure Agent Fresco keeps a close watch on Mr. Noctilucent," she instructed. "We wouldn't want him getting any wrong ideas."


	6. In Bloom

The sun beat down on a vast cement parking lot that surrounded a modest, two-pump gas station and squat supermarket behind it, heating the gray surface. Nestled at the far end of a town called Mayberry, settled on the windswept plains beneath the great shadow of the Red Road, the station was one of the last vestiges of civilization until the Road hit the Andalusian Mountains out west.

Spreading chestnut and poplar trees grew in stands around the aching and sagging wooden houses which lined the road that cut the town in half and connected it to the Red Road. Scraggly front lawns and battered sidewalks decorated the small town and set it apart from the shiny cities to the east and west. It was a quiet place with a quiet dignity that was set apart from society and liked it that way.

Below a vast blue sky with contrails of white that cut through it, resting on that hot cement parking lot outside the supermarket, was the _Odyssey_. The camper was connected to one of the rusting pumps by a gas line that shuttled the precious fluid into the RV's tanks. Reddington stood by it in his leather jacket, watching the counter on the pump move upwards.

Starlight, meanwhile, leaned against the rickety RV on the other side, looking out and away from the grocery store, past the small town's dusty road, and to the wild plains beyond. The tall grass swayed in the wind like a vast ocean on land, rolling and diving with it. She kept one hoof over her eyes to block out the harsh rays that tried to blind her while she watched.

A chime above the door of the convenience store next to the gas pumps dinged as Professor Staten walked out with a plastic bag in his mouth. He narrowed his eyes against the glare and ambled over to the _Odyssey_. He wore a loose shirt covered in flowers that he had bought at the same station, along with a new pair of sun shades.

He walked up to Starlight and held up the plastic bag. "I thought I'd get you and I something to keep with you just in case."

"In case of what?" she asked, looking away from the majestic scene and, unfortunately, back to Staten's aging blue face.

He shrugged. "Accidents, death, explosions, you know, the kinds of stuff that's already happened before we even got out of Gracia."

"Very funny. So what is it?"

The hazel-eyed pony reached in the bag and produced a small headset with a wire that ran to a box with bumpers for hooves to press. It was an older model mobile phone; the kind that were bought with minutes instead of some sort of data plan.

"I figured that the two of you could use some phones in case we need to contact each other," Staten said. "I've got my own that's not hooked up to any big phone company, and you two need to do the same. It makes it harder to trace the calls."

Starlight took the phone and looked down at the little box it came with. There was a small screen that, unlike the newer models, only displayed the names and numbers on a monochrome green background.

"I already put my number and the one for our smuggler's phone in there," he said. "You're welcome, by the way."

"Yeah, thanks," she mumbled, scrolling through the half-dozen menus, "just what every growing girl needs."

Staten rolled his eyes and went off to give Red a phone. The smuggler had denied owning one, so it was about time that changed. If he was going to work for them, he was going to keep in contact.

Starlight stayed put, leaning against the camper while she fiddled with the thing. She had had one not so dissimilar back in highschool, but the plans had been too much once she started to live on her own. Besides, who was going to call her? Her parents? _The professor_?

She shook her head. It wasn't like she had missed out on much. Now, all it took was getting chased by the government while traveling with her dad's friend and a crazy smuggler to get her another one. She had to smile a little bit at that thought.

Starlight sighed and looked back out across the plain, but it didn't look quite so peaceful anymore. Instead, it looked vast and empty: a great waste that stretched on petramin after petramin and made their destination beyond the mountains seem forever away. And in between them and the destination could be a thousand different threats like those in Gracia. Or worse.

"What's on your mind?" Staten asked, walking around the RV and shrugging on his jacket. "You look troubled."

Starlight shook her head. "It's nothing. Really."

"Somehow, I don't think you're telling me the truth," he said.

"It really is nothing. Just afraid is all."

"Afraid?" he said. "Afraid of what?"

She sighed. "Well, you got us those phones for 'emergencies' and it got me thinking. That smuggler is the only one here that knows how to shoot a gun. You and I can't really look out for ourselves if we get separated from him, and there's a lot of chances of that between here and the Serenity Valley."

Staten leaned against the side of the RV and smiled. "Who said I didn't know how to shoot a gun?"

"Well I just assumed—"

"Your father and I had quite a bit of fun out in the open desert in our excavation days." He sighed wistfully. "The least I can do for your father is teach you to defend yourself properly."

Starlight jerked her head toward the other side of the RV. "What about the smuggler?"

"What about me?"

Red came walking around the RV with his leather jacket hanging on his back. He nodded toward the _Odyssey_. "The gas is pumped and we're already paid. We can hit the road at any time if you two are ready."

Staten turned to him. "I was actually thinking about taking Starlight out and teaching her how to shoot. I know you have weapons; I'll pay you for the ammunition later."

"Woah, woah, go shoot _my_ guns and _my_ ammo while I sit here and do what, exactly?" Red asked.

"You seem to have neglected to fill up your cupboards and refrigerator with, well, anything," the professor said. "The supermarket is right over there. Why don't you go fill up while we're out? I'll even give you the money."

Red took out a pistol from beneath his jacket and smiled. "Or I could show the lady how to shoot."

Quicker than Starlight would have thought possible, Staten surged forward and wrenched the gun from the smuggler's hooves. Then, in one fluid motion, he tossed his sunglasses up in the air and shot two neat holes through the lenses. Starlight held her hooves tight to her ringing ears and grit her teeth.

"I'll show Starlight how to shoot," Staten ordered. "You go get the food. Meet us back here in an hour."

Red grumbled but took the money the professor offered and started back toward to the supermarket. He kept his head held low and his pistol once again holstered.

Starlight was left alone outside the RV while Staten smiled at her and climbed up in the _Odyssey_. He rummaged around for a minute before reemerging with a saddlebag loaded down with guns and ammo.

"I think this might be enough," he said.

"Yeah, for arming the militia," Starlight said, then shook her head. "Whatever, let's just go."

She followed the professor to the edge of the road, then ran across with him when no cars came. They trotted across the ditch on the other side and arrived at a barbed wire fence that separated the fields from Mayberry.

Staten used his hooves to spread apart the fence into a hole large enough for Starlight to climb through, then followed after her. The pair found themselves waist deep in the sea of grass the caressed over them in waves.

"Doesn't this land belong to somepony?" she asked.

"Probably," he said, "but these country hicks won't stop us. Come on."

Starlight sighed and trudged along behind the professor until they were well away from the roads and houses and everything else that made up civilization. They could hear the chirping of crickets and other bugs while birds circled high above.

The professor stopped after what felt like an hour of walking and held up his hoof. "Here is good," he said.

"About time," Starlight grumbled.

He ignored her and shrugged off his saddlebag. From inside, he produced a long barrel shotgun and then took off his floral-pattern shirt. He marched out about two hundred petra from Starlight before shoving the shotgun in the ground butt-first. The barrel stuck up above the grass and he tied the shirt to it until it was whipping around like a flag.

"That's our target," he said, pointing to the shirt. "Let's see if we can't hit it."

"Yeah, sure, whatever you say," she said.

Staten pulled out a standard rifle and showed it to her. It had a long, shiny barrel that ended with a dark wood stock that had been smoothed down until it shone. The butt, like all pony weapons, was specially made to lean into the shoulder so the pony's full body would absorb the brunt of the recoil.

With a smile, Staten brought the gun up and aimed down the built-in sights. He brought his opposite hoof up to the lever-trigger and pushed down on it. The rifle barked and spit smoke and fire as it sent its lead bullet downrange.

A single hole appeared in the short as the retort rang out across the fields.

Starlight's hooves leaped to her ears. "You keep doing that!" she yelled. "Warn a pony before you do!"

"Right, sorry," the professor said, giving her a pair of earplugs from his bag.

Starlight popped them in her ears and nodded to him. "Okay, you brought me out here to teach me, so teach."

"Well, first thing," the professor began, taking up position behind her and putting the rifle on her shoulder, "is to get a proper stance down."

* * *

Reddington tried to ignore the squeaky wheel on the buggy that he rolled through the supermarket lanes. The stuffy little concrete store had him sweating as he pored over cans of corn and fruit that looked like it had been run over by a truck a couple of times.

The few other customers in the store were elderly folk who paid him no mind and did little to get out of his way when he walked down the snack food aisle. After getting dirty looks from a few of them, he made sure to buy as much soda and chips as he could carry. He would do anything to remind the geezers who was the young stallion in the store.

He shook his head when he passed them.

_What did they matter? He was a smuggler!_ _Sure, that girl and the professor started to ignore him and didn't seem to think he had any idea what he was doing . . . but that didn't make him an idiot! They wouldn't forget him when they were thankful to have food in their bellies._

Metal fans lazily spun through the air above him, doing little but to move the hot air around a little bit. Red grumbled beneath his breath about it and did his best to get everything they needed.

In the cart, he had piled in, along with the chips and soda, a variety of fruits, canned goods, vegetables, bread, cheeses, and some milk to put in the _Odyssey_'s fridge. That was as much as he could think of at the moment and would be enough to make it to Amperdam, at least.

He pushed his cart to the store's sole checkout counter beneath the thin windows that let in murky light, reflecting off the dirty linoleum floors. Red fought from fidgeting in the unfamiliar, enclosed space and longed to be on the road back in the _Odyssey_.

There was a small teletube with a bunny ears antenna sitting behind the counter, which a plump mare watched while occasionally doing her job. She hit the side of the machine and the static dancing on the screen cleared for a moment. It was some local hick reporter droning on about crop news and traffic on the Red Road. Red ignored it like everything else in the little town and placed his items on the counter for checkout.

The mare looked at him with disdain for interrupting her show but started to scan the food and place it in bags for him anyway. She rang up the total for him and took his cash without a word. Red started to breathe easy again when she gave him the change and loaded the bags into his cart. Then he heard his name.

". . . a stallion known only as Reddington, interstate smuggler and petty thief, is wanted for kidnapping, assault, assault on an officer, grand theft auto, and treason," the little tube blared. "He was last seen heading west on the Red Road and all towns are advised to be on a lookout for him and his passengers. Here is a police photograph for reference."

To Red's horror, an old mug shot of him popped up on the screen. He'd changed enough since then that he hoped he could pass for a different pony, especially as the clerk watching the tube turned around to face him.

"Have a nice day," she said in a strained voice.

Red nodded to her and did his best to keep cool as he pushed the buggy out the door and back to the parking lot. He could feel the clerk's eyes boring into the back of his head, and he broke out into a run once he was outside.

While he ran, he wrenched the mobile phone from his pocket and put the headset on. He got up the contact list and dialed the girl's phone number. Just as he did, he thought he could see the clerk start to approach him from across the parking lot.

* * *

"You have to learn to control your breathing," Staten told Starlight after she missed her eighth shot. "Otherwise you will be too shaky to aim anything. Breathe in when aiming, then out before you pull the trigger. Keep both eyes open at all times."

He was standing over her as she struggled with the gun. The thing had enough recoil to send her sprawling without the right stance and was aching against her shoulder.

"How am I supposed to control my breathing _every time_?" Starlight asked. "That's impossible."

"You have to feel it," Staten said. "Do it until it becomes instinct. Again."

She sighed but raised the gun and kept her eyes glued to the shirt with one hole punched through it. She tried to feel the way the grass around her bent and swayed to the wind.

_Deep breath_.

She took aim and placed her hoof on the trigger.

_Let it out_.

She fired.

This time, the gun bounced back instead of up or some other direction, and the bullet flew straight and true. A rough hole was shorn near the bottom of the shirt.

Starlight jumped up in the air and laughed. "I did it!" she cried.

Staten smiled and patted her on the shoulder. "That was a fine job you did. Now do it ten more times and you'll be a real marksmare in no time."

Before she could, though, her mobile started to ring. She had left it in the saddlebag and hurried over to it. Putting the piece in her ear and clicking the answer button, she said, "Hello?"

"Listen, girl, it's me," the smugglerl said on the other end. "I'm going to have to make this quick, but I think the townsponies know who we are. The clerk at the supermarket . . . she saw me."

Starlight could hear sirens begin to wail in the background.

"Shit," Red said. "Okay, I gotta go, but you and the old guy get out of here as soon as you can. I'll find a way out."

The line went dead and Starlight threw off the headset. Staten was staring at her and she shook her head. "Red's in trouble," she said.

"Of course that little fool would get himself into something . . ." Staten began.

"No, no, it sounded like they found out who he was," Starlight said, "and the only way they could have found that out is if there is a bulletin out for _our_ arrest too."

Staten smirked. "So are you saying that we mount a rescue operation?"

"Well I managed to hit one out of nine shots with this thing," Starlight said, shaking the gun. "So why not? It's nothing worse than what we've already done."

The professor laughed. "That's the spirit!"

Together, they sprinted back across the field with the professor lugging the saddlebag with him and Starlight doing her best to cradle the rifle to her chest. Luckily, Staten made her turn the safety on before she shot herself in the face somehow.

They made it back to the parking lot to find the place deserted, but the RV still parked in front of the empty pumps. There was a shopping cart next to the camper that was loaded with food but nopony to attend to it.

"We're too late," Staten muttered.

He paced around the parking lot after setting the bag down. "They'll have taken him to the local police station by now and have probably called in the _IS_ too. We don't have long before they're here, but we're going to be outnumbered by the cops. We'll need surprise, but all we have is the RV . . ."

Starlight shrugged. "A big RV barreling toward me would be a pretty big surprise to me."

"No, no, they could just shoot out the tires or the driver if they felt like it. It won't work as a surprise, but, perhaps, a distraction." Staten got a big grin on his face. "Starlight," he said, "load up all the food from the cart except fruits, vegetables, or anything soft. Then, give me a grenade or two. We're going to have a little fun."

* * *

The county sheriff was a lime colored stallion with a barrel paunch and thinning yellow hair who was fond of wearing reflective sunglasses and a beefy jacket while he chomped on a cigar.

He kept Red in the front of the town's small jailhouse, located at one corner of the dusty town square, instead of inside. He had told him the _IS_ would be coming and they didn't want any surprises.

The smuggler's heart beat faster. The IS weren't going to play nice if they wanted the girl and the professor so bad. Yesterday, he had been just another smuggler, but now he was _valuable_.

He tried to wrench his hooves against the shiny, like-new cuffs, but it was to no avail. The sheriff, however, noticed him doing so and laughed.

"Don't even bother; those aren't going to be broken open until our friends at the Intelligence Service get here. I just know they're going to _love_ you."

Red snarled at him. "At least they notice this little hellhole for once."

The sheriff slapped him. "Quiet you," he said. "I'm not stupid. Nopony's gonna provoke me while we wait."

"Fine," he said, looking away.

The sheriff started to laugh. "Oh, don't tell me you're scared! Boy, you're practically shaking!"

"I am not!" he shot back.

"Sure, sure." The sheriff leaned closer to him and smiled wide enough so that the smuggler could see his broken and yellowed teeth. "Listen, let's just make this easy. You tell me where your little friends are and I tell the _IS_ that I never found you."

Red backed up and shook his head. "Never," he said. "As long as those two are with me, they're my crew, and I take _care_ of my crew."

The sheriff shrugged. "Suit yourself. Just hope you'll feel the same way when the suits are done with you. In the meantime, just relax and let my boys keep an eye out for your friends."

Clumped together next to the jailhouse were the four other police of the town. The perimeter of the town square was just a bunch of sagging brick buildings with roads at every corner. There was a small stand of trees with a gazebo in the center. It was deserted at that time of the day and utterly quiet.

That was, until the blasts of a horn filled the empty stretches of the square.

The sheriff laughed. "That must be them. Time to go."

It was Red's turn to shake his head, though. "No, that's a very particular horn," he said. "That's _my_ horn."

Down the side street across the square from them, the _Odyssey_ came barreling down the street, its horn blasting. The mighty vehicle roared across the square until it came to squealing stop in front of the jailhouse, turned to the side to present a larger target.

The hatch at the top opened and Starlight popped out, rifle already raised to her shoulder. She cocked it and kept it trained on the sheriff.

The four police officers raised their weapons as well and pointed them all at Starlight. She tried to keep their aim steady as they came to a standoff.

What the officers, nor the sheriff, noticed, however, was the metal grocery cart filled with fruit that had rolled its way out from behind the jailhouse. Red had only a second to see it before he dove to the ground as the explosion went off.

Gooey extracts of a dozen kinds of fruits and vegetables covered the sheriff and officers in a nonlethal mess that left them sputtering and confused.

Before they could come to their senses, a stallion wielding a big, silver shotgun came walking up from the alley the cart had come from.

"Well look at this," Staten said. "Looks like we got here just in the nick of time. What does that make us, Starlight?"

"Big damn heroes, professor," she said.

Staten smiled. "Ain't we just?"

Red stared at the two of them, cornering the town's entire police force. _The old geezer and the girl? Really?_

The professor walked up to the sheriff and tapped him in the chest with the shotgun. "Sorry to interrupt," he said, "but you've got something that belongs to us and we'd like it back."

"This is an official police investigation," the sheriff began. "You cannot think to disrupt—"

"You see the mare hanging out of the top of the RV with the really big gun?" Staten asked. "She's one of the criminals the IS wants. She's a convicted killer and we've come an awfully long way and, well, she's looking to kill somepony."

"I never liked this town anyway . . ." Starlight mumbled.

Staten nodded to the officers who put down their now-gooey guns. "Right, so let him go."

"But he's a wanted fugitive," the sheriff protested.

The professor raised his shotgun into the sheriff's face. "But he's our fugitive, _so let him go_."

* * *

Refueled and safely out of the clutches of the _IS_, the _Odyssey_ cruised down the Red Road with a full tank of gas and full fridge of junk food. Minute by minute, the town that would now be swarming with black-suited agents was falling behind them while the mountains to the west got closer and closer.

"I guess we're all wanted criminals now," Red said at last.

Starlight smiled from her chair near the back of the RV. "Yeah," she said, "but it has a nice ring to it, don't you think?"

He coughed. "And that was mighty fine of you two coming to pick me up back there. You really saved my skin."

"Don't mention it," Staten said from the passenger's seat. "If we're going to make this journey, we will all have to work together."

He looked out the window to where the Red Road rose up to the mountain pass and where he knew it dropped off into Serenity Valley soon after. "I'm afraid we will be tested on that before long."


	7. Bad Moon Rising

The whirring of rotors filled Noctilucent's ears. Though the ivory stallion wore large headphones that caught on his inky black mane, the eternal hum filled his eardrums and refused to allow him a minute's rest on the flight from Lupine Falls back to Gracia.

Not that he could have gotten any sleep anyway. The back seat of the IS spinner was nothing more than a hard, cushioned bench up against the rear metal wall. Noctilucent's back ached from the hours of flight, made worse by being packed between two agents in black suits.

Across from him sat the grey-and-black spotted Agent Fresco. He had glared at Noctilucent the entire ride, one hoof always near his weapon. Even as they began to descend, once they had reached the outlying suburbs of Gracia, the agent kept his eyes locked on their newest member.

The spinner threw up dust and stray blades of grass as it came down in a park in the middle of a neighborhood about twenty petramin outside of downtown Gracia. It was a quiet and well-kept neighborhood, so naturally the residents flocked to watch the landing of not just a spinner, but an all-white IS spinner.

Ponies gathered in a ring around the spinner kept their hooves on their ears until the blades had finally stopped spinning and the vehicle had come to a complete rest. Not a second later, the anonymous agents were out of the passenger area and working to create a perimeter for them.

Agent Fresco stood and half-helped, half-pulled Noctilucent from his seat, wrangled the headphones off, and escorted him off the spinner and onto the soft soil of the park below them. The pilot waved to them and leaned back in his seat, his job done.

The elder stallion followed Fresco and the other two agents away from the spinner and across the verdant green field to the entrance of the middling suburb. It had all the tenets of its kind: blocks of four models of houses placed close together and done in earthy tones that were bright, but not _too_ bright. The lawns, as usual, were immaculate and the cars in the driveways higher-end.

Farther down the blacktop road, right on the corner, was a house surrounded by police vans and IS cars. Their lights were still flashing and bright green police tape ringed around the perimeter while ponies went in and out of the front door.

"So you brought me back to Gracia to look at Staten's house?" Noctilucent asked. "What's the point? We already know where he's going."

Agent Fresco nodded. "Yes, that is true, but we do not know _why_. Serenity Valley is home to over ten million citizens; the task of finding them will be impossible without knowing where exactly they'll be heading first."

"Right, sure."

Noctilucent followed the agents down the street and up to the house. He stepped underneath the police tape and up the steps to the small bungalow. The door was off its hinges and hanging to one side while a single agent milled outside. He started when he saw Agent Fresco walk up and did his best to get out of the way. He only gave a cursory glance when the ordinary citizen followed Fresco in.

The interior of the house was a mess, as to be expected, but Noctilucent had a sneaking suspicion that the police weren't the only reason. He remembered that Staten had always been a bit of a slob, so it was unsurprising that his house was as well. The building itself wasn't very big. A small living room with a model kitchen and master bedroom with a bath. There was a study upstairs, he knew, but they had searched every petrabit of that place already.

Fresco turned to him. "Well?" he asked.

"Well what?" Noctilucent replied.

"You're the suspect's friend," the agent said. "We've searched every petrabit of this place: we've gone over his computer records, his phone bills, and his mail. Not a single shred of evidence. That's why you're here, to find what we can't."

"And if I can't find it either?"

Fresco cracked a frightening smile. "Try not to think about it."

Noctilucent looked further around the house. He grinned a little, seeing the serious police agents box up all the little knickknacks and food boxes that Staten had left laying everywhere. He'd never liked to throw anything away, saying it was an archaeologist's duty to find the value in everyday things. How the old coot thought a takeout box would be valuable someday was a mystery, however.

"Well?" Fresco asked after the fourth time Noctilucent had circled the sparse living room, pawing around his video collections and gaming consoles.

"There's nothing here," the older stallion said. "I'm telling you, Staten isn't the kind of stallion to just leave important stuff out where anypony can find it. Even somepony like me."

Fresco's expression didn't change. "Search the study."

Noctilucent sighed, but dutifully walked across the small room, past the kitchen swarming with police officers and agents, and up the stairs toward the study. Staten had invited him for drinks a few times and they had always made their way to the musty old room at some point to swap stories and reminisce about old times.

The warped door to the study hung open like all the others and contained a couple agents who peeked at the sturdy bookshelf against one corner and poked around the desk in the other. Both were ordered out by Fresco, who shut the door behind him.

Noctilucent turned to him. "I really don't think—"

"Keep looking."

The aging finance broker and former archaeologist sighed and moved over to the bookshelf. If Staten had kept anything of use to the _IS_ in the house, it would be there.

He picked out a few books and stared at the titles: _The Twilight Code, A Case for Celestia, _and _The Unicorn Delusion_. He rolled his eyes, but Fresco seemed to find interest in the doorstop-sized novels.

"Your friend was certainly . . . interested in the Old World Myths," he said.

Noctilucent shrugged. "Every archaeologist gets a little interested in this kind of stuff at some point, I suppose. In the end, though, you dig enough and you figure out for yourself that there's no such thing as a 'Canterlot' or a flying pony outside of little kids' stories."

"And Mr. Staten believed differently?"

"I wouldn't say he _believed_ in them," Noctilucent said, "but not as skeptical, I guess. He used to have this theory, you see, Celestia and Luna, the big ones, were like _gods_ to the ponies and that, maybe, they angered them and the two took away their wings, horns, and magic, then wiped the world clean."

He chuckled a little. "He was a Solarist when he was younger, but kind of gave that up, so I guess he wanted to believe _something_. Used to give me crap for being an Adanist, I'll tell you what."

Fresco seemed to have retreated back into his shell and gave Noctilucent a blank stare once more, as if he knew more than he wanted to say. "Keep looking," he ordered.

Noctilucent scanned the bookshelf once more, over the covers of passé sci-fi novels and big fantasy series that Staten had kept since his youth. Then, he spotted one book out of place among the rest. Its black spine stuck out from the orderly shelf, as if it had been put back in a hurry.

He took it out and his eyes widened when he saw the cover. _Teton Atlas_. When he flipped it open, it turned to a page not quite in the middle of the thick book. What was more important than the page it turned to, however, was the ones that had been torn out of the book near the front.

Fresco appeared next to him. "What do you have?" he asked.

"It looks like he tore out some maps," Noctilucent said, then whistled. "If I'm reading this right, they were the maps for the area in and around Amperdam."

"Amperdam? What's there?" Fresco snapped.

"Nothing, nothing." Noctilucent shook his head. "We only went there a few times. We never did anything except—"

"Except what?"

He paused. "Have you had any agents sent over to my house since you got me and my wife?"

"We had a few patrolling near there for your daughter and Mr. Staten, but they left once the pair had run from the police with Mr. Reddington. Why?"

Noctilucent shut the book with a thump. "Get me over there right now."

* * *

The ride over to his house in the back of the police car had Noctilucent on edge the entire time. He kept looking out the window at the lunchtime traffic and willed it to move so they could reach his house before Staten got any farther with his daughter.

That thought set him on edge.

Every time he shut his eyes, it seemed, his mind was assaulted with the images of Staten dragging Starlight further and further away from him, and toward whatever danger his old partner had gotten himself into this time.

_Dammit, Staten, why didn't you pick me for this fool adventure_? _Why Starlight_?

After what seemed like an eternity inside the stuffy police car, they arrived in front of his house. Noctilucent noticed more damage than he had when he'd been shoved into a van in the middle of the night and winced a little. He wasn't here to look over the damage, however, and leapt from the car once they let him out.

He bounded up the front steps, through the front door, and across his living room to his study. He paused for a moment at the destruction that had been brought down on it, but then looked around for what he knew in his heart was already gone.

Sure enough, after a moment of searching, he found the family portrait he had paid for many years ago. And, like he had most feared, the front was cut out and the disc inside was missing.

Noctilucent threw the picture aside and sat in the rubble of his study, trying to keep the thoughts of Staten taking his daughter to _her_ away.

Fresco popped his head into the room and stared at the older stallion. "Do you know where Mr. Staten has gone?" he asked.

"Get a spinner out here," Noctilucent ordered. "We need to get to Amperdam."

* * *

Agent Nightcall sat on the hard, uncomfortable interrogator's chair in the Sundown IS office's interview room and wondered if the furniture was as bad on the other side of the big, metal table. The copper-colored stallion with the soft, wavy golden mane that he been worn and fringed from stress stared down at the papers that had been faxed from Lupine Falls to him.

Across the table sat Sunny Skies, her hooves crossed in front of her teal chest and her icy blue eyes staring daggers at her would-be interrogator. For the twenty minutes the two had spent in the room together, she had not said one word.

Night sighed and took out a prisoner interrogation form from the bottom of the folder and put it at the top of the stack of papers. He clicked open a pen and asked, "Name: last, then first with middle initial."

Sunny snorted. "You already know my name."

"It's for the official form; just tell me, okay? I don't like this anymore than you do."

"Skies, Sunny D," she growled.

"Great." Night wrote it down at the top of the form. "Height, weight, date of birth."

"Ten petras tall, a thousand pounds, and the beginning of time."

He put the pen down and rubbed his forehead. "Look, I know you're mad, but there isn't anything _I _can do about it. You want to get mad at somepony, take it up with our head office. Right now, I just have to do this for the records."

"Well, I may be happier to answer your questions if I knew what I was even being stuck in here for," she said. "Last time I checked, holding me without a reason was against the law, but you IS colts have never been good at obeying that, have you?"

"Look, the information of what's even going on is _just now_ getting down to us over here," Night snapped. "We don't know much either! We're stuck in the dark and while you get to sit here and stew I have to be out there trying to figure out a way to keep this whole situation from falling apart!"

He took a deep breath and tapped his pen against the form once again. "Look, you help me with this and I'll tell you what I know, okay? It may come as a surprise to you, but I like obeying the law. Now: height, weight, and date of birth."

Sunny continued to leer at him, but answered, "Two petra and three petrabits, sixty-one pounds, and June 7, 2017."

"Place of employment and job title."

"The University of Sundown and Professor of Hippology — Doctor."

"Alright, good," Night said as he wrote it down. "Now, the important thing: relation to Dr. Staten Lane, curator of the Gracia Museum of History and Science?"

Sunny's eyes narrowed. "So this is about him, is it?"

"It's what Lupine Falls wants." He shook his head. "Not my question."

"Well you can tell them that, oh yeah, he's my dad! Yeah, we haven't talked in a while, but he's my father and if they think I'll tell them anything about him, they can shove it up their overly-puckered flankholes."

Night smiled a little. "I'll write 'No Comment.'"

Sunny leaned back in her chair. "Okay, so I gave you the whole story on me, now why don't you hold up your end and tell me just why I'm still in here?"

Night shuffled the document back into the folder with the rest. He'd have one of his desk jockeys send it off to Lupine Falls and hope they didn't respond very fast. He leaned forward on the table and cleared his throat.

"From what we know, your reasons for being held is a little more . . . complicated . . . than the deal with that couple in the other room. Most of it stems from the crystal heart we were forced to remove from the dig site."

"It didn't used to be so active," Sundown said.

"As we are well aware. Its transformation is what has us worried the most. According to readings from around the edge of Sundown, that thing was pouring out more radiation than a megabomb, and it still is. If we scanned you right now, you'd probably be white-hot."

Sunny raised an eyebrow. "I wasn't the only pony there, you know. There were dozens of ponies: financiers, board members, faculty, and the rest."

"And we're doing all we can for them too; they've been escorted to the hospital." He sighed. "The only problem with you is your ties to the heart being there in the first place and the relationship your father has with the object and his current position with the Intelligence Service and Teton Government."

"You want to arrest him."

"I've been informed that he fled the city of Gracia with his former partner's daughter and a smuggler. We're being told that they're on their way here. Of course we want to arrest them."

"For what?" Sunny cried. "What have I or my father done that could possibly justify _this_ kind of treatment?"

"We are only holding you and wish to hold your father until we can figure out all that is going on," Night said. "Or do you want to be out there on the streets, walking around like some rad bomb?"

Sunny sat back in her seat and didn't say a word. She looked away, towards the one-way mirror, and refused to respond to any more questions the agent posed to her. The interview was over.

Agent Nightcall sighed, collected the document folder and walked out. In the hall, he instructed a junior agent to escort Miss Skies back with the other prisoners in their room.

On his way back to his desk, Night was joined by Agent Flower, who stepped out of the other interview room and gave a big yawn. The light violet mare had dark circles ringing her golden eyes, and her maroon mane was almost as frayed as Night's was. She had discarded the heavier trappings of her Agent uniform, leaving only a white undershirt and black trousers.

"I take it your interview with the proud parents didn't go so well?" Night asked once they had reached his desk. He just about threw himself into his chair, which squeaked and groaned in protest. He took a cup of coffee off his desk, sipped it, decided it wasn't too old, and drained it.

The oppressive desert heat had started to set in for the day once again, and the fans around the office were going at full blast, though they did little to bring relief to the poorly-ventilated office.

"Shockingly, new parents don't want to be told they can't go home with their child," Flower said, taking a seat in a plastic chair somepony had brought for her. "Explaining the finer points of security protocol was more an exercise in patience than anything else."

Night smirked. "An exercise they won, huh?"

"You could say that."

"And I am." The supervising agent laughed and scratched at his mane. "Can you even believe all this crap? We're getting news from Lupine about radiation and mutations and all this other bull. They're talking like it's the 90s or something with all the dirty bomb scares and mutant ponies."

"I don't . . . I don't even know what to believe," Flower said, leaning forward in her chair and putting her head in her hooves. The once resilient and stone-faced agent now just shook her head and frowned. "Bringing them in was hard enough, but now it's like every hour that passes, things get worse. There's talks of quarantining the entire city, and who is supposed to do that? The Army's out in Sethton, the police force here is only big enough to keep a tight watch on downtown and, well, we're overwhelmed by three stubborn prisoners."

"Close the city? Really?" Night asked.

"It might just be a rumor, but who knows at this point? Phones are tied up at Lupine and what we get from them is conjecture at best."

The both of them were silent for a moment. The office around them was quiet as agents who had worked through the night fought to keep themselves awake. Night leaned back in his chair and tried to get comfortable.

"What are we going to do, Rose?" Night asked, using the name he'd found in glimpsed on Flower's paperwork.

Rose raised an eyebrow and rested her hooves against his desk. "Are we on first name terms now?"

"I try to get familiar with my agents as best I can," Night said quickly. He turned to an agent at a desk not far from him. "Isn't that right, Blackstone?"

"My name's Topaz," the agent said. "Jerk."

"Right you are, Tom," Night said, then turned back to Flower. "See? Familiarity."

The agent rolled her eyes and put her forehooves behind her head. "Well, to answer your question, _Night_, I'm not really sure what we are supposed to do at the moment. Headquarters hasn't given us much in the way of direct orders that we haven't done already and we're all taxed out today. If I may, I might go find somewhere to take a nap."

Night tapped a hoof against his chin. "Well, you could do that, but when's the last time you've eaten?"

"Yesterday, why?"

"Well, there's a good diner just around the corner." Night scratched the back of his head. "Want to go grab something? Strictly business, of course."

Flower smiled a little. "Strictly business? You promise?"

"I'm a stallion of my honor," Night said.

"Alright, then let's go. I'm starving here."

* * *

A steady downpour of rain beat against the front windshield of the _Odyssey_. The RV idled in the middle of a dozen other still cars on the Red Road, all stalled while they waited to pass through the final mountain pass and into Serenity Valley.

It was late in the day and the heavy clouds overhead glowed orange from the setting sun. They had spent the entire day on the road and would make it to the valley just as night fell.

Red sat in the front seat, his head resting on his hoof as he idly watched the cars in front of him. In the seat next to him, sprawled out in the leather chair, was Staten Lane. His eyes were closed and jaw hung open.

At the back of the recreational vehicle, curled up in the small bed with the blanket wrapped around her, was Starlight. She had pushed her way against the pillow and slept quietly through the trip.

The steady beat of raindrops against the back window kept her in a dreamless sleep as she waited for the _Odyssey _to make it past the mountains and into the valley. For the moment, she was content to sleep.

Then, the traffic started to move again.

It was so sudden that Red jerked in his chair before putting the _Odyssey_ in gear and following the cars in front of him. As if a lever had been pulled, the stalled traffic melted into a throbbing vein of cars moving steadily forward.

Staten awoke to the sound of the cars and looked around. "We're moving again?" he asked.

Red nodded and smile. "You're going to want to get that daughter of yours for this. We're almost out of the mountains."

Staten nodded and slid out of his chair. He stumbled across the interior of the RV as it moved, then wrenched open the door at the back.

The beam of light that invaded the small bedroom hit Starlight in the face and she awoke with a sigh. "What is it?" she mumbled.

"We're almost to Serenity Valley," the professor said. "I thought you might enjoy your first view of it."

"Can't it wait?"

"Not if you don't want to miss it."

Starlight debated for a few seconds about whether to stay in bed, then sighed and swung herself out of the bed. Her hooves touched the cold floor—she winced—and then followed Mr. Staten out of the bedroom and toward the front of the RV once again.

The road ahead of them rose up until it came to a crest where it sloped down the other side. The _Odyssey_ neared the top just as Starlight and the professor joined their smuggler by his side.

"You ever seen this before, kid?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Never."

The RV finally made its way to the top of the hill and, for a moment, rested on the top.

"Well then," Red said, "welcome to Serenity Valley."


	8. Nightvision

The _Odyssey_ crested the last hill before Serenity Valley and drove on toward the land set in between monolithic mountains capped with snow. Down on the valley floor, at the meeting point of three wide rivers, was the city of Amperdam.

Spread across two opposing river banks, the city rose above the forested valley with glass spires and uniform grids of suburbs. As night fell on the city, the roads and freeways surrounding it lit with thousands of tail and headlights. Meanwhile, the neat, squat suburban homes burned brightly as parents returned home from work and children did homework by lamplight.

In the mountains above the city was a feature unique to Serenity Valley. Rising from tiers of stone cut into the mountains itself was a second city: Skyhall. Roads climbed up through the mountain passes to reach the mile-high metropolis that ringed around the largest peak in the valley. Its lights glowed brightest in the night and washed over Amperdam like a watchful protector.

The rain from earlier had let up on the other side of the mountains as night settled in. A broad expanse of stars wheeled overhead while a crescent moon watched over the valley.

Starlight took in the view in stunned silence. Her jaw hung open and her eyes widened as she swung her head back and forth, trying to see every inch of the vista before her.

"Yeah, I had the same reaction my first time too," Red said with a laugh. He looked at her again, then focused on the wheel and the traffic that moved steadily around the RV.

"You been here much, gramps?" he asked Staten.

The professor nodded. "Not in a while, but in my younger days the Valley was one of the most popular places to be for graduate school." He sat back in his seat and sighed. "Ah, the '20s."

The _Odyssey_ rumbled around a turn and Starlight snapped out of her stupor. "Wow, just wow," she said.

"City girl liking her first taste of the rest of the country?" Red asked. She hit his shoulder and he just laughed. "Hey, don't get jealous now. This job has some benefits, you know."

"It's going to have less if you don't keep your eyes on the road," Staten warned. "Let's just try to focus on getting into Amperdam, alright? We can think about the rest later."

"Fine with me," Starlight said, taking a seat in the recliner behind the two front seats. "Though would it be too much to ask for us to get a hotel for the night?"

"Would it be too much to ask for you _not_ to hog up the bedroom all the time?" Red asked. "I've had to sleep in this chair every night so far."

Starlight glared at him, but then just looked out the window and did her best to ignore him. They were driving down one of the last hills now, approaching where the Red Road lowered to the ground and ran along one of the rivers into Amperdam. A section of the road, however, curved away and headed up toward Skyhall.

The RV rumbled on toward Amperdam at a steady pace and the traffic moved with it. They were going smooth, but Starlight could see a flurry of red brake lights far ahead. Red grunted when he saw it too.

"What the heck is going on down there?" he asked.

Staten leered at it. "Nothing good, I'm sure," he said. "Slow down."

They approached it as Red drifted toward the far right lane. The RV approached the last exit toward Skyhall, intent on barreling past.

Then, roaring down from the sky above, came an all-white IS spinner. It swooped over the highway and hovered over the section of the highway all the cars were stalled at.

"Take the exit!" Staten commanded.

Red stared at him. "What? Are you serious?"

They had almost passed the exit, so the professor leaned over and spun the wheel, dragging the RV toward the off ramp. The _Odyssey_'s tires squealed and the cars behind them honked, but the RV managed to get on the exit, clipping the side of the ramp with a thump.

"Are you _crazy_?" Red shouted, taking the wheel from Staten's hooves and glaring at him. "We could have been killed! What were you thinking?"

"That was an IS checkpoint back there," Staten said. "I'm sure of it. And how long do you think we'd last if we got caught at one of those?"

Red shook his head. "So you see one IS spin-job and you automatically assume a traffic jam is caused by a government checkpoint? I know we're supposed to be cautious, but isn't that just paranoid?"

"Better to be safe than sorry. I don't put it past the IS to block off a road just to catch us."

Red sighed and just drove onward. The exit ramp snaked along the edge of the valley and rose up toward the mountains and Skyhall above. No matter how much he wanted to turn around, he wouldn't be able to once they were fully into the mountains, and even then it was a long loop around to get back to Amperdam.

"So, what, are we going to Skyhall now?" Starlight asked.

"It seems like it," Staten said. "We go there and figure a way into Amperdam. Shouldn't be too hard."

Red grunted. "You say that, but if the IS really blocked off the Red Road, they got the rest of them too. And good luck getting into Amperdam without a road, considering it's the car capitol of Teton." He laughed. "Plus, the only way by water goes down over the country's largest waterfall, so good luck with that."

"But you're a smuggler, aren't you?" Starlight crossed her hooves over her chest. "Can't you, you know, _smuggle_ us into Amperdam?"

"No, see, that's the beauty of this whole thing. Since our little 'escape' from Gracia, the whole country's going to be not only looking for the two of you, but me and the _Odyssey_ too. I can't run a single checkpoint if I wanted to."

Starlight sighed and laid back in her seat. "Great, then."

The RV drove on, up the mountain slopes around Serenity Valley, drawing ever closer to Skyhall. The city of seven tiers loomed above them, a watcher in the night. Its bright lights a welcoming gate from the danger behind them.

* * *

The outskirts of Skyhall were small suburbs built on the slope of the mountain. Some areas were flat and cut from the rock while others simply rested on the incline. The _Odyssey_ turned on the curving road that ran through the suburbs and on toward the first massive tier of Skyhall. For a city that had once been an army fort, it still looked very much like one.

"So here's one thing I don't get," Red said, taking a sharp turn with the sluggish RV, "why haven't the IS closed off Skyhall if they went ahead and shut off Amperdam too? I mean, it doesn't seem like that much of an effort."

"They know that what we want is in Amperdam," Staten said. "Why spread your forces thin if you can just wait for your target to come to you?"

Starlight leaned forward in her chair. "Okay, so we have to go to Amperdam . . . but for what? Last you told me, we needed to head to Sundown. What's the point for our stop?"

Staten didn't say anything and the RV grew silent, save for the road noise coming from outside. They were passing through a dingy district of Skyhall's suburbs, with plenty of bars, cheap motels, and nightclubs scattered around. Only a few cars shared the road with them.

When the professor had been silent for a few minutes, Red slowed down and turned in to a parking lot outside a strip mall. "Gramps, you're going to need to tell us something or we're not going anywhere."

Staten sighed. "Alright, alright. Before we can go to Sundown, I need to see a friend down in Amperdam about something my daughter told me about."

"Daughter?" Red asked, looking at Starlight.

"Uh, other daughter," she stammered. "My older sister . . ."

"Sunny." Staten shook his head. "She's a professor out in Sundown, and she told me that she'd found something interesting at her school. Something about an artifact I had uncovered rumors about years ago."

"And you need to go to Amperdam about this why?" Red asked.

"I have an old geology friend there. She studied the carvings back in the days before it had been discovered. I figure she might give us a little information on the artifact before we get to Sundown. It's going to be touch-and-go once we're there, so best to figure out now what we can."

Red stared at Staten for a moment, then nodded.

"Alright, fair enough. Now, how do you suppose we can get you in touch with this geology friend of yours from all the way out here in Skyhall?"

"A payphone will do," the professor said. "I have her personal number; if she doesn't answer, we're already too late."

"And is there a reason you can't use one of the mobiles you bought?"

"The IS, sooner or later, is going to search my friend's phone records for all incoming calls. If they find the mobile number, we can't use it again or they will know our location instantly. Seeing as none of the shops are open this late to buy a new one, a payphone is a nice alternative."

Starlight looked out the window to the dark concrete lot outside. There were a few lamp posts scattered around, near the closed shops. Then, in the orange light beneath one of them, she spotted a lone phone booth.

"Hey, there's one outside!" she said. Staten looked where she was pointing, then nodded.

"Good," he said. "I'll be back in a minute."

The door opened and the professor walked out, grabbed his jacket, and let the door slam shut behind him. Red watched out the front window as the professor stalked across the parking lot and toward the pay phone booth.

He turned to Starlight.

"So did your dad not tell you much about what he does?"

She coughed. "He's not the most open of stallions, no. He had to come and get me from my own apartment. We weren't exactly on the best of speaking terms."

Not a lie, she supposed, though not quite all the truth. Then again, it was better than telling Red the entire story. She didn't want to know what he would think if he found out about her.

"I know the feeling." The smuggler sighed. "Me and my dad didn't talk to each other much, either. I think it reminded him of the kind of stallion I was becoming, and he didn't like that very much. When I moved out, he said bye and hasn't given me a call since."

"Do you ever get in touch with him?" Starlight asked. "Or, I mean, is he . . . ?"

Red shook his head. "He and my mom live out in Sethton with my brother. He's a nice kid, but they tell me I can't talk to him unless I make the trip out there, and I don't want to put any pressure on the little guy."

Starlight rubbed a hoof across her forehead and looked out the window. She'd never known what it would be like to have a sibling, but the idea of parents who didn't like her so much wasn't new. She bet her father wouldn't even come looking for her if he tried.

Red clicked on the radio. It started in some news program, but he spun the knob until he came on a country channel. He settled back as the sounds of wheedling guitar and drawn-out lyrics came through.

Starlight rolled her eyes but allowed the smuggler to keep his music.

"You know, country is a lost form of music," he said.

"Is it?"

Red laughed. "'Course it is. What you're hearing now was recorded half a century ago. Not a whole lot of new stuff these days. It's all 'glam rap' and 'pop rock' instead of the old stuff."

"So why do you listen to it?"

"Because nothing plays better on the open road than country music." Red smiled. "It's the same kind of music that was played by the ponies that built this country. They crossed it first, so I'm just following in their hoofsteps."

Starlight sat back and listened to the music for a minute. It wasn't as fancy or complex as newer music, but it did have a kind of old world charm. It was a sentinel of a bygone era in Teton history, and even she could appreciate that, despite how little she'd ever cared for history at the museum.

"_Baby you and I, are not the same. You say you like the sun, I like the rain. So before we go through it all again, you better catch yer own train . . ._"

Just as the song ended and the radio station went to commercial, the door to the RV opened. Staten walked in and sat down in the passenger seat with a sigh of relief.

"She's alright," he said. "I talked to her and the IS hasn't found her yet. I told her to stay out of sight and out of trouble until we get to her. With all luck, we'll still be a couple steps ahead of the government."

"Well that's a relief, for once," Red said.

Starlight nodded. "Yeah, but where do we go for now?"

"What we do," Staten said, "is go and find us a cheap motel to stay at. A place that doesn't ask questions and won't be on the grid unless the IS searches every last place in Skyhall. Can you do that, Reddington?"

The smuggler turned the key in the ignition and the _Odyssey_ coughed to life. He drove away from the parking lot and back onto the main highway. Partway up the mountain, however, he turned right and passed into a valley between two snowcapped peaks. Lights glowed down in the green area between the mountains.

They drove toward it and were soon among rundown gas stations and houses with bars on the window. It reminded Starlight of Horizon back in Gracia, but more spread out. Sure enough, before they had gone too far, they spotted a dull neon sign that advertised the Sleepy Hollow Motel.

Red pulled the _Odyssey_ in and stopped out front of a dingy office building out front. Behind it was a half-circle of concrete rooms, each with a heavy door painted red. The RV came to a stop and the three got out.

"Lovely place," Starlight muttered.

"Your dad's the one who wanted us somewhere like this," the smuggler reminded her. "If it were my choice, I'd go for somewhere that the cockroaches don't outnumber the guests . . ."

Staten ignored them and ducked into the run-down office. Red and Starlight followed him into the dark office, lit only by a lamp on a desk in the corner. A magenta mare sat in a worn-out chair, her eyes passing over a magazine she held in her hooves. She looked up when they came in.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

"Yes, we would like a room, please," Staten replied.

Her eyebrow rose. "Is this for an hourly rate, or . . ."

"Just for the night," Red cut in. "We need a room. A cheap one."

The mare turned in her chair and brushed some fast food wrappers off an old cash register. The machine sprung to life with a touch of a button while the mare got some papers out of a drawer on her side of the desk.

"Alright, the room is going to be fifty rounders for the night," she said, pushing the papers toward them. "You can pay in cash or credit, but we do not accept checks or wire transfers."

Staten looked at the other two, then nodded and drew his wallet out of his jacket. He produced a plastic card and slid it toward the mare behind the desk. She accepted it and pressed a few buttons on the little cash register.

She slid the card through while the trio of fugitives stood in a tense silence. The machine made a little beep and they relaxed for a moment, but then the mare shook her head.

"I'm sorry, sir, but your card has been denied," she said.

"Denied?" Staten asked. "Are you sure? Try it again."

She slid the card through the machine again, but it made the same beeping noise. "I'm sorry, sir, if you want to try another card—"

Statentook the card from her and began to march out of the building. Starlight and Red looked at each other, then hurried after him.

"What gives?" Starlight asked.

"Get back in the RV," Staten hissed.

His shift in tone stunned her for a moment, but she followed his order and climbed into the RV along with Red. She shut the door behind her and slumped in the recliner, per usual. She watched as Staten slammed into his seat and threw his wallet across the room in a fit of rage.

"Woah, woah, now just calm down," Red said. "No need to go do somethin' you'll regret."

Staten whirled around. "Regret? Oh, you mean that emotion that is supposed to come when things get _better_? Well good news, smuggler boy, this isn't the case."

"What are you talking about?"

"What am I talking about?" Staten laughed. "Don't you see? The IS got ahead of us once again! And, worse, they almost certainly know where we are now."

Red shook his head. "You mean from your card being denied? What if they just drained your account?"

"Oh, of course they did," Staten said. "But, see, they're going to keep track of that account. Every time I use that card, it's going to send out a big message to them of where exactly I tried to use it."

He began to thump his head against the window beside him, making a soft rattling sound. "How could I have been so stupid? This whole chase is starting to get to me."

"So they're going to be tracking us right now?" Starlight asked.

Staten nodded. "Almost certainly."

She turned to Red, who watched the pair from the front seat with a grim look on his face. He was tapping his hoof gently against the steering wheel.

"Is there _nowhere_ we can go in Skyhall?" she asked him. "I mean, you're a smuggler, aren't you? Don't you know somepony, anypony here?"

Red took a moment before answering, "I did. Once. But I don't know—"

"Anywhere is better than here," Staten interrupted.

The smuggler sighed and started up the engine. He backed out of the motel's parking lot and drove on, deeper into the mountain valley and the seedy districts. They passed by more bars, brothels, and thrift shops. They were aglow with neon and packed with shady customers, even at that late hour.

Farther into the valley, though, Red turned the _Odyssey_ onto a ramp that ran back up toward the backside of the mountain Skyhall sat on. It looked out over a massive, forested plain with further cities sticking up in the distance. On the rear of the mountain, on stone terraces, were the suburbs of Skyhall.

The _Odyssey_ drove through quiet streets with small lawns and clapboard houses squished together into large neighborhoods. Far from the neon of the valley, the suburbs were nestled and asleep.

Starlight watched the forest valley outside the RV windows. She gazed at the stars above that swirled in a black blanket above her. She could see the faint yellow glow of another city far across the forest valley. Whitetail, if she remembered correctly.

As the RV drove up the ramp toward an upper terrace, she took in the quiet awe that the city gave her. It was easy for her to forget how exciting the trip could be, were it not for the _IS_. In all of the craziness, she had begun to forget that she was achieving a dream she had held for so long.

Eventually, the _Odyssey_ came to a stop in front of a squat, one-story house. It was not much different from any of the houses around it, save for a stone birdbath in the front lawn. The driveway was empty, but the lights were on inside. One of the few houses on the street that was still lit up, in fact.

Red drove up and parked in the driveway.

"This is it," he said. "Been a while since I was here last."

Staten looked around. "Good. The ISwill have to do some digging if they want to find possible hideouts we could have."

Red got out of his seat and stepped down out of the RV, his eyes on the house's front door. Staten followed him, with Starlight bringing up the rear. They all snuck up to the archway in front of the door and paused outside.

The door was green and loomed above them as Red knocked on the door. There was no answer at first, then they could hear the sound of locks being undone from the inside. Then, the door cracked open and an eyeball appeared from the other side, attached, presumably, to a head.

"Whaddya want?" a gruff voice demanded.

Red gulped. "Is, ah, Sunrise still living here?"

"Red? _The_ Reddington?" The door swung open to reveal the head and shoulders of a dark green pony. He nodded for them to come in and his sage mane fell over one eye. "Come in, come in. Folks like you shouldn't be out in the open at this time of night."

Once they were inside, Starlight noticed he had a blanket thrown over most of his body. More worryingly, he clutched a pistol in one hoof as he swung the door shut. He waved it around as he spoke.

"Red, tell me you're not with the government, are you?"

"No, no, of course not." Red rubbed the back of his head. "In fact, I was just wanting to stay here for the night until things blow over. Like old times, you know? I figured maybe you could do me a favor . . ."

A ghost of a smile appeared on Sunrise's face. "Like old times, eh? I admit, you've got a whole lot of nerve coming to me and talking about old times, but, well, it turns out I need you too, right now. See, I'm going to need your help with the IS."

"Oh?" Red raised an eyebrow. "What trouble did you get yourself into this time? Dealing again?"

"Not . . . exactly." Sunrise reached back and pulled the blanket off his back.

Starlight didn't figure out what she was looking at for a moment, but when she did, she let out a gasp. Folded against the green pony's back was a pair of large, feathery wings. Just like the ones she had read about in the museum.

* * *

Back in Serenity Valley, in an office at the top of a small concrete building that stood in the shadow of a glass skyscraper, stood Noctilucent. He looked around the tiny office, strewn with papers and maps of every kind. There was a mare talking on the phone at a desk in front of him.

Agent Fresco watched her as she talked to a friend of hers. She was nodding and speaking quickly to him. The conversation drifted off after a minute, and she hung up.

She whirled around in her office chair, and faced them. Her black mane was done up in a bun and she put one blue hoof on her chin. "Did I do well, boys?" she asked.

"You did just fine, Ms. Midnight," Fresco said. "You and your family have been a great help to the Intelligence Service. Your loyalty is admirable."

Midnight gulped and continued to smile, her cheeks straining from the effort. "Thank you."

Noctilucent turned to Fresco. "See, I told you that Staten would call her eventually. The stallion's predictable, if nothing else."

Fresco nodded. "You were indeed correct, Mr. Noctilucent. Even better, we now know where your daughter is. Reports are coming in of them attempting to use a credit card."

"Where?" the older stallion asked.

Fresco pointed out a nearby window toward the glowing tiers in the mountains above Amperdam. "They're in Skyhall."


	9. Any Colour You Like

"Right," said Red. "Those are definitely wings."

He leaned forward on a cream-colored couch in the middle of Sunrise's living room. Tall bay windows near behind him cast the glow of a full room into the room, and mixed with the dull amber glow of a table lamp.

Sunrise sat on a stool in front of the couch, staring at the three ponies in front of him. His pale red eyes traveled over Starlight and Red, next to each other, and Staten who kept his distance from them all. The professor stared at the thick front door with a furrowed brow.

"I think I'm dreaming," Starlight murmured.

"You have no idea," Sunrise muttered. "I've been wishing that these things have been pipe dreams, but no matter how sober I am they won't go away. It's like being strapped to a curse."

Red fell silent, and rubbed his chin with one hoof. His gaze slid over Sunrise and to Starlight, then back again. His mane looked stringier than it had when they'd reached Skyhall, and lines showed around his mouth.

"When did you get the wings, exactly?" Staten asked suddenly from his perch on the end of the couch.

Sunrise blinked, like he hadn't been expecting the half-fossilized stallion to speak up. "Oh, uh, it wasn't very long ago," he said. "In fact, it was just around the time of that earthquake over in Sunrise. I remember it was all over the news."

"And you're sure about that?"

"Sure I'm sure. I can feel the memory of it returning."

Staten slid off the couch and walked up behind Sunrise. He ran one hoof over the feathery appendages and hummed to himself. "Then tell me, what do you remember?"

"Well, I remember the news being on," Sunriset said. "They were going on and on about getting emergency help out there and re-ran this stupid story about a foal who survived in a tree. Wouldn't stop talking about the little brat.

"Anyway, I start to feel a little woozy, right? I felt like I was on a ship in the ocean, even though I was just in my living room. So, I stumbled over to the kitchen to get something to drink, then, suddenly, I'm waking up on the kitchen floor with a bruise on my head and two wings on my back."

"Can you fly?" Starlight asked. "Like, you know, like a bird?"

Sunrise shook his head. "I tried, you know. I've been holed up in here since I got these things, so of course I got bored and did my best to fly. I can flap them and everything well enough, but it's way too hard to take off."

"Interesting . . ." Staten muttered. "Vestigial wings, but for what purpose? Or perhaps not vestigial, but you are too weak to use them."

"Hey, I ain't weak!" Sunrise puffed out his chest and threw his hooves up.

Staten rolled his eyes. "I meant that if you haven't had them since birth, then your muscles and skeletal structure are unlikely to be right to use them. If a pony was born with these, however, the effects could be quite . . . exhilarating."

Red hopped off the couch and paced around behind it. "You know, I get that it's cool and all you have wings," he said, "but all this means is that we're an even bigger target for the IS than before."

"You're the ones who brought them here," Sunrise mumbled.

"They would have come eventually," Staten told him. "By all accounts, the IS is gathering everything strange due to the quake, including us. It's only now that you have a fighting chance."

Red seemed to light up at the mention of a fight, and looked around the room. With a huff, he trotted off down a hallway to the right of the living room that ran between the main area and the kitchen. Starlight looked around, then followed him down the corridor.

The narrow hallway with white plaster walls ended in a simple bedroom. An end table with a lamp on top edged against a single bed with blue sheets and an alarmingly-large pile of pillows on top. Other than that, the room was bare, without even the thinnest of carpeting.

"Uh, is there a reason you came back here?" Starlight asked.

Red ignored her, and instead walked over to one corner bare of anything but a wooden floor. He hunched over and began using his hooves to pry off one of the floor boards. He grunted and was able to yank one of them off, then another. They were both tossed aside.

Starlight ran over to him. "Hey, what are you doing?" she cried. "You can't just pry up his floor!"

"Oh? Is that it, you tell me what I can and can't do in my friend's house?" Red said. He reached down into the hole he had made, and searched around inside. He grinned and began pulling something up. "Besides, girl, I've been at this much longer than you have."

The object he pulled out left Starlight speechless. In Red's hooves was a midnight-black rifle with a stunted barrel and large banana clip underneath it.

Red slid the slide open and checked inside, then smiled. "Glad to see he still kept the heavy weaponry around here," he said. "Wouldn't want to go up against the IS with empty hooves, would we?"

He reached back inside and pulled out a similar weapon, along with a couple pistols. The last thing he pulled out was a burlap sack spilling over with rolls of bank notes. He took one and tossed it at Starlight. "Have a thousand rounders," he said.

She caught it and stared at the little roll of money. "Is this . . . is this for real?"

"Of course it is. What do you take me for?" Red chuckled. "Though I wouldn't be so quick to spend it. It's money marked by the police back in me and Sunrise's old days. They're good in a pinch, but use too much in one place and you'll draw the IS to you like ants to honey."

Starlight stared at the fat stack of bills in her hoof. She had never seen so much money in one place before, let alone having it belong to her. She watched Red stuff the rest of them back in the bag and sling the guns over his back.

"So you think we'll really need these?" she asked.

"Do I think? Yeah," he said. "Do I hope? I really don't. It'd be nice if the IS didn't show up here with spinners and trucks full of gun-toting stallions, but I think the chance for that flew out the window a long time ago."

Starlight rubbed one hoof over the other and looked at the floor. "Do you think we'll make it out of here? Like . . . alive?"

"Hey, don't sweat it." Red placed a hoof on her shoulder. "We'll make it out of here just fine, I promise you. I've never gotten into a fight that I couldn't walk away from, and I don't plan to start now."

Starlight gave him a smile, and followed him back to the living room with the clump of bills held in her teeth. Sunrise looked up when they arrived, though neither he nor Staten seemed overly surprised at the heavy weaponry Red carried.

"Expecting a party, are we?" Staten asked.

Red set the assault rifles down on the living room's coffee table and nodded. "A party of the worst sort. We need to pack up all we can and get on the road. If we don't, then I doubt there will be any getting out of this city except in an IS spinner."

Sunrise shot out of his chair. "What about me?" he cried. "Are you all just going to leave me here for the IS to get?"

"Calm down," Red said. "You're coming with us, you big drama queen. Those wings are relevant to what we're after anyway, and we think Staten here has a friend who can tell you more about them. So just calm down and start loading all the supplies you've got into the RV."

"Right, right, of course." Sunrise licked his lips and nodded. "Thanks for this, Red. You don't know what this means . . . yeah." He scooped up the rifles and headed out his front door. Red let him go, then shook his head.

"He's going to be trouble for us, I just know it," Staten said.

"He's a good pony," Red replied.

"Yes, but for how long? He's scared and in the presence of strangers and somepony he hasn't seen in years. What's to keep him from turning us in to the IS?"

"I know my friends, alright?"

"But for how long?"

Starlight sighed as the two continued to argue, and did her best to tune them out. She dropped her billfold into the sack with the rest, and grabbed the burlap in her teeth. It was heavy, but she managed to drag it out of the house and toward the RV that was still sitting in the driveway.

The night air felt cool and crisp on Starlight's fur. The quiet suburbs on the backside of the mountain cast little light into the sky, so the young mare was able to glance up at the stars that whirled above her. She smiled like she always did when she looked at them, and trotted over to the _Odyssey_.

Sunrise was standing in the doorway, looking off toward the road that led to the rest of Skyhall. He looked up in surprise when Starlight approached.

"Got your money," she said. "How'd you and Red get all of this, anyway?"

"You probably don't want to know," he said.

Starlight snorted. "I'm not some little girl."

"You ever shoot anypony?"

"No . . ."

"Then you're a little girl around here."

Starlight glared at him, but the winged stallion refused to meet her gaze. She sighed and gave up after a minute, and left the sack of money with him.

She turned to go back inside, but Red and Staten barreled out of the front door before she could. Both still argued with each other, but they made it to the RV in one piece, at least. Red gave Staten the keys to the RV, and nodded to Starlight.

"Alright, that's just about everything," he said. "Me and Starlight are going to go check inside the house one more time, alright? You two keep watch and we'll clean up and cover our tracks. By the time the IS gets here, this place will be clean."

Staten nodded. "Alright, we'll honk if we see anything. If we get overwhelmed, though, we might have to leave you two."

Red smiled. "Sounds like a plan."

He galloped back inside, with Starlight trying to keep up behind him. Red sprinted past the kitchen and toward the back bedroom where he'd found the rifles. Starlight found him digging around in the cubby hole beneath the floorboards.

"What now?" she asked.

"Just checking for more loot," he said. "We hid most of these so long ago that there could be anything in here."

He dug around, and smiled when he brought out a small pistol. It was pitch black and, unlike the rifles, made to be held and fired in a pony's teeth. Red gave it to Starlight, and she slipped it into a holster that he had found with it.

"Come on . . ." he grunted, digging deeper into the hole. "Just something else we can use."

There was a short crack when he was digging, and Starlight heard him let out a sharp hiss. "Damn," he grunted. "That one wasn't so pleasant."

"What's wrong?" Starlight asked.

"I got my hoof stuck," Red mumbled.

Starlight held back a laugh when she looked over the hoof that was dug into the floorboards. "You really did," she said. "You're in their pretty tight."

"Oh just shut up and help me."

"Alright, alright, no need to get hostile."

Starlight moved around to Red's front and wrapped her hooves around Red's leg. She pulled, but to no avail. The hoof remained stuck, and the stallion it was attached to was biting his lip until it bled.

Then, to add to it, Starlight heard the honk of the RV's horn from tried to pull harder, but only succeeded in digging him in further.

"Come on, come on," she muttered as she worked. The honking continued as she worked to free Red. At last, she was able to pull a board out of the way and Red came up with one last pull. By the time she had gotten him out, though, she heard the squeal of tires and the rumble of the _Odyssey's_ engine.

"No!" Starlight ran to a nearby window, but only in time to see four IS cars rumble to a stop in front of the house. Agents in black scrambled out of the cars and headed for the front door.

Red pulled Starlight away from the window, and dragged her down the hall toward the bathroom. She struggled a little, but he didn't let up until they were both inside the narrow room, and he had softly shut the door. He stared at it like it was made of bees, and stayed as far away from it as he could.

"You could have just let me follow you," Starlight hissed.

"Hey, it's not everyday I get to drag a mare to the bathroom," Red whispered, and winced when Starlight glared at him.

They both stopped their foaling around when they heard the creaking of wooden floorboards down the hall. The IS were checking Sunrise's room, and the pair could hear the low rumble of conversation coming from it. There was a clatter as the sound of an agent jumping into the cubbyhole echoed down the hall. The sounds of more agents came, like they were pouring in.

"How are we going to get out of here now?" Starlight grumbled.

Red looked around, then patted her on the shoulder and pointed upward. There was a narrow window above the toilet. Moonlight shone through it, giving them light to see by.

Red hopped up on the toilet, and creaked open the window. He watched the door to see if anypony had heard him, but the door remained shut. He took a deep breath and slipped outside.

Starlight jumped up on the toilet after him, but one of her hooves slipped and knocked hard against the porcelain. The sound was loud, and she winced. She could hear everypony outside the room go silent, then start chattering and moving toward the bathroom.

Feeling like her heart was in her throat, Starlight struggled back up on the toilet, and onto the back. The window was just barely in her reach, and she had to haul herself up to it. Her forehooves weren't as strong as Red's, and her muscles ached to hold her whole body up. Her back hooves dragged against the wall.

The door had been locked, thankfully, but the agents were banging on it. "Just come out peacefully and you will not be harmed!" somepony yelled.

Starlight strained and grabbed for the outside edge of the window, but couldn't quite get it. Instead, she started to fall backward, and couldn't hold herself up with just one hoof. She felt her hooves flail as she started to fall back, and she cried out.

Then, just as suddenly, she stopped. A hoof hung on to her own, and at the end of it was a smiling Red. "I've got you," he said. He pulled her up to the window and was squeezing her out when the door finally burst open.

Starlight's rear end hung inside the bathroom while Red pulled her out. She began to kick just as a couple overexcited agents fired their pistols at her. She felt a sharp pain in her inner thigh, but by then she was pulled free and on the outside of the house.

"Were you hit?" Red was yelling.

"I-I think so," Starlight mumbled.

"Can you run?"

Starlight stood up, and tested her hind legs. It stung like Adana himself had hit her, but she could withstand it. She nodded and took off with Red toward the back fence of Sunrise's house. She could hear the agents running to get out of the house to chase after them.

"Come on, follow me!" Red cried as he burst through the back gate and into an alley behind the house.

Starlight tumbled out the gate in time to see Red take a hard left down the alley of back fences and driveways. They ran, hooves pumping and vision going dark at the edges from the adrenaline flowing through them both.

Lights switched on and dogs began to bark as the neighborhood woke up to the interference of the IS. Ponies watched them from backyards where they stepped out in pajamas and nightgowns to see two ponies sprinting behind their house.

Finally, Starlight saw the end of the alley, and the road beyond. From there it was open ground toward the rest of Skyhall, and hopefully to the _Odyssey_. She could feel the blood pumping in her ears and her breath came in short gasps.

Then, just as they had reached the alley, Red and Starlight were blinded by headlights. They both skidded to a stop in the face of the vehicle, out of disbelief. The IS had caught them, and there was nothing they could do.

"What are you two standing around for?" Sunrise screamed from the door of the RV. "Move it or lose it, you two!"

Red looked up in question, but Starlight didn't need anymore prodding. She scrambled over to the open door of the _Odyssey_ and barreled inside. She threw herself into the recliner inside the RV and had never felt so happy to be in it.

Red got in a few seconds after it, and Staten roared off. The IS had filled the alleyway, but if they saw the RV they didn't shoot. The _Odyssey_ weaved like mad through suburbs quickly filling with ponies, on a general course further up the mountain to downtown Skyhall. Spindly towers and stone forts converted into cafes and penthouses.

Starlight's chest heaved as she sucked air back into her lungs. They felt like they were on fire, and her eyes were squeezed shut. When she opened them, she saw spots in her vision, and her mouth felt dry. "Did we make it?" she asked. "Are we alright?"

"We'll be fine," Red said, turning around to face her. When he did, though, his brow furrowed and his eyes traveled to her flank. "Though, are you going to be?"

"Yeah, why do you ask?"

He pointed to her rear. "You've got blood all over you."

"I don't know how I—" Starlight began, but then took a good look at herself. Crimson blood was smeared over her pale flank, and it was erupting from a . . . a hole just above her thigh. Like a cork out of a wine bottle, seeing the hole brought a rush of pain through her body.

Starlight hissed and held a hoof over the bullet wound. Blood flowed from around it, but it at least stopped the worst of the bleeding. Now that the shock started to wear off, it felt like a giant needle was digging inside her, tearing through her and leaving her whimpering on the recliner like a school filly.

"What's wrong?" Staten called from the driver's seat. "Who's hurt?"

"Starlight's been shot," Red said. He looked back at her again, and bit his lip. "She needs to go to a hospital, or we're going to have a problem on our hooves. There should be one downtown."

Sunrise got out of his seat and shook his head. "We can't!" he said. "If we go to a hospital, any hospital, we're going to get impounded by the IS and this whole thing will have been for nothing. We might as well just turn around and tell them the whole thing."

"We can't just let her die!" Red said. "She's been hit bad and if we don't do _something_ then, well, I don't want to think too far after that. You get the idea."

Starlight started to feel woozy, and the conversation seemed to float around her like in a heavy haze. She bobbed her head down, but fought to stay awake as the _Odyssey_ sped faster and faster toward downtown Skyhall.

"We won't let her go untreated," Sunrise said. "But we can't go to a hospital."

Red shook his head. "Unless you've become a surgeon since we last saw each other, then I don't think we have much of a choice, Sunrise."

"No, no, not me." Sunrise pointed up toward downtown Skyhall. "You remember Parish? The dealer who would quote Adana scripture and all that crap? He's a priest in training up at the Church of the Heavenly Solstice in Skyhall."

"So what?"

"So all the priests get medical training because some of the hardcore Solarists don't like hospitals. We go up there, and there's a good chance he can fix your friend up."

Red sighed. "What do you say, professor? Is it worth risking it?"

"We'll try the church first," Staten said. "But if they can't fix Starlight then we get her to a hospital. I'll keep the engine running."

Red turned back to Starlight, and saw her smiling at him. Her eyelids fluttered and her hooves started to go weak.

"Starlight?" he asked.

"I feel funny . . ." she mumbled, then her eyes closed and she slumped in the recliner.

"Starlight!"

* * *

Noctilucent arrived to the marked house in Skyhall inside of a black, unmarked van. It pulled up to the curb of the the suburban ranch house. Spinners flew through the air, buzzing and spreading their spotlights all across the neighborhood. Agents went from house to house, asking questions and talking with unhelpful citizens who weren't happy to be awake so early.

Fresco walked out of the house with a disgusted look on his face. He shook his head and ran a hoof through his close-cropped mane before taking a junior agent by the sleeve. "We have been ordered to _not_ shoot at the subjects," he growled. "We don't want corpses, understood? Another slip up and every agent here gets demoted."

He let go of the shaken mare and made his way over to Noctilucent. "Who did they shoot at?" he demanded. "Was it Starlight?"

"I'm sure it wasn't," Fresco said. "Probably the slimeball they took with them from this house."

"Which wouldn't have even been a concern if your agents had gotten here faster," Noctilucent said. "Now they're saying that they've lost them again! I can only help you so much if you can't find an old professor and an inexperienced mare in this city."

Fresco sighed and rubbed his forehead. "Mr. Noctilucent," he said, "we'll find your daughter, don't worry. They can't have gotten far."

Noctilucent leaned against the van. His heartbeat had slowed once he'd been assured that his daughter wasn't hurt. He took in a deep breath of the cool night air and looked around. "I wonder why they'd take the guy who was here too, why he wouldn't turn them in."

Fresco shrugged. "Nearest we can tell, the stallion who lived here was a former criminal, so he may have been the friend of the smuggler. That, or they kidnapped him."

"No way," Noctilucent said. "Starlight wouldn't have let them do that."

"You don't know that."

"I know my daughter."

Fresco shook his head. "Well, that's not the point. What we need right now is to set up a perimeter in Skyhall. We're going to have to move the barriers from Amperdam up to here."

"And what do you expect me to do?" Noctilucent asked.

Fresco pointed toward downtown Skyhall. "Take a spinner down there and get on the wire with that professor in Amperdam. Find out who, if anyone, that professor knows in the city and keep a lookout at local hospitals for whoever got shot."

"Should I salute you?"

"No, but you should remind yourself that you are a guest so long as you cooperate, Mr. Noctilcuent."

Over the city, storm clouds gathered. Far away from the house, on the other side of Skyhall, rain began to fall on a lone RV that stopped in front of a grand church that sloped up the side of the mountain.


	10. You're Gonna Go Far Kid

Starlight's eyes snapped open. The world was blurry for a minute as her mind fought to identify where she had landed. The last moment she had been conscious, she had been in the RV, now she was . . . wherever here was. Soaring spires that looked like they were made out of sand and glass extended upwards to an arching ceiling far above her. A mural of a sun crackling in the sky above an ancient city was painted on the surface.

She sat up, holding a hoof to her head and fighting the urge to vomit. Her mouth was watering, and she had to wipe away some spit that made its way out. Starlight's gaze traveled across rows and rows of pews with hard benches and felt backs that faced a central pier made out of sandstone and covered in drawings of suns.

"Great, church is just what I need," she muttered, realizing she was laying on a back pew. As far as she could tell, the church was empty, with the only sign of life being the electric lamps attached to the walls were turned on.

Starlight tried to get up, but a bolt of pain shocked its way through her. She looked down and saw one entire flank covered in bandages. Some had dried blood on them that had soaked its way through. Her stomach did a turn, and she really did almost vomit.

A door opened behind her, and she heard chattering voices that echoed as they walked into the central chamber. They stopped when walked into her field of vision, and revealed themselves to belong to Staten, Red, and a pony she had never seen before. He was a short, stock stallion garbed in soft, white robes that covered him from head to hoof.

"Hey, look who's up," Red said, trotting over. "Sleep well, Princess?"

Starlight rubbed her head again. "What happened to me? I remember being in the RV, then . . . nothing."

The pony in the robes smiled at her. "You were hit by a bullet," he said in a soft voice. "It nicked an artery, and you ended up losing a lot of blood. Luckily, your friends were able to take you to me."

"You mean, I was shot in the ass?" Starlight asked.

"The bullet hit your flank, yes. You are very lucky it hit the fat there instead of more of the artery."

Red snickered while Starlight glared at him. When he had calmed down, he waved a hoof at the pony in the robes. "Starlight, meet my friend, Parish. He's a priest-in-training here at this Solarist church."

"My official title is Sol Parish," Parish said, "but most call me by my name. Welcome to the Church of the Heavenly Solstice, I only wish your visit was more holy than one of necessity."

"He's the one who fixed you up," Red explained. "Some of the hardcore Solarists don't go for hospitals, so he's got training in surgery. You should have seen him . . . or maybe not. It was pretty messy."

Starlight rubbed a hoof over her bandages and shivered a little. "How did you replace the blood?" she asked. "I mean, I've heard stories about Solarists, but . . ."

Staten smiled. "We all gave some for you. Hurt a bit, but we managed to get you stable."

"Well, um, thanks. To all of you."

"Don't mention it," Parish said. "We Solarists believe that we are to spread our light to anypony in need, no matter what they believe in."

"And I'm glad for it." Starlight looked around again at the massive, sloping walls and delicate patterns on the ceiling and pillars around the room. She whistled. "I've never been inside a Solarist church," she said. "The Adanas don't have anything like this place."

Parish bowed his head and shuffled his hooves inside his robe. "You are lucky to see one of the most unique Solarist churches in all of the world," he said. "This one was carved out of Skyhall's mountain, and we have been blessed to have built such a mighty structure as this. Many come in here just to look, even Adanas."

He waved his hoof in a circle in front of his face, and bowed his head. He muttered something in an old language, then smiled once again. "I can only thank Solaris that you woke up to see the church. To tell the truth, I was not sure if you would. You are a very lucky mare, Starlight."

Starlight chuckled. "I guess Adana wanted to keep me here for a while longer. Maybe he was in league with Solaris." She thought that Parish's eyes flickered for a moment at her little bit of blasphemy, but he didn't say anything.

Her stomach began to growl, and she held a hoof to it. It felt like her insides were trying to claw their way out, and she was tempted to find out how well the religious books of theirs, the Sol'ar, tasted.

"Is there anything to eat here?" she asked. "I'm starving."

* * *

Red and Staten had gathered some food from a small kitchen inside the church and spread them out on a blanket in front of the pews, on the same platform as the pulpit column. Starlight had managed to walk up there, but it had left her sweating and her flank aching. She lay down on the blanket eagerly and gnawed at some fruit and noodles in a can.

Sitting next to her was Red, chewing silently on a peach. Sunrise and Staten sat with Parish on the other side of them. Starlight had thought about saying something to him, that he didn't have to feel guilty, but she thought better of it. She admitted to herself that she almost liked having him next to her.

"I see you've all been through a lot," Parish was saying as Staten told him their story. "Far beyond what even I have experienced. I am happy to see you are all here and well . . . barring present company, of course."

Starlight nodded to him. "Hey, could be worse. We could be in an IS spinner right now, headed for Lupine Falls to be thrown in a dungeon somewhere." She slurped on some noodles, spilling juice all over her face. "I'm sure my parents are already in there too, and I'm not so hot to want to join them."

Parish looked grim. "That doesn't sound much like the IS I've known," he said. "They never seemed the villain type."

"Maybe they're just scared," Staten said. "They're confronted with something they neither understand or control, and it terrifies them. I can understand them wanting to gather together everyone with some control over the Crystal Heart, just to make them feel on top of things. Power is a funny thing."

Red snorted. "Or maybe they're just flankholes."

Sunrise was quiet, and pushed around his food. He kept looking at Starlight, then looking away with his ears pressed flat against his head. Red watched him too, and coughed.

"Got something to say, Sunrise?" he asked.

"It's nothing," Sunrise said. "Really, it's . . . nothing."

"You know, if there were ever a place to confess, it would be in a church," Parish said. "We're all friends here, I believe."

Sunrise looked down. "I gave the order to drive off to Staten. We could have waited, and then Starlight wouldn't have gotten shot. She almost died because I got jumpy and wanted to get out of there."

"It's not your fault," Red said. "We're the ones that brought everything down on top of us."

Starlight hesitated, then nodded. "Yeah, anything could have happened. I was just in the wrong place. And besides, I'm alive now."

"Plus, it was Sunrise here that gave the most blood," Parish said. "He made sure you pulled through, Starlight."

"See, there you go."

"I guess," Sunrise said, though he did so quietly while flicking his tail. Starlight wanted to say more to him, but it was clear he was just going to keep on feeling guilty about the whole thing. So, she dropped it.

Staten swallowed the rest of his food, then waved to everypony gathered. "I think it might be time we all get some sleep," he said. "It's been a long day on top of many long days, so a little sleep won't hurt any of us. Especially you, Starlight."

"There are plenty of extra beds in the basement," Parish said. "This church is also a disaster relief center and a home for the poor if they need it. Feel free to find one and use it tonight."

"Will do," Red said, then brushed against Starlight. "I'll help you get downstairs. I don't imagine it'll be easy with that leg of yours."

Starlight smiled. "Thanks." She offered a hoof to him, and he helped her hang on to his shoulder and lurch along next to him. They made their way down the aisles and turned a corner toward the basement. Staten left with Sunrise, leaving the cleaning to Parish.

Parish sighed, then set about cleaning everything up. The church had a small cell for the priests, and it came with a kitchen. He carried the dishes back to it, and washed them before heading to his bed. He flopped into it with a tired groan, and was asleep within minutes.

* * *

The problem, however, is that it seemed he could only get to sleep for a few minutes at a time. Parish tossed and turned on the rough hammock the church had given him. He held his tongue, but felt like cursing his idea to be a priest rather than a drug dealer with a feather bed. After a few hours of tossing and turning, he gave up and pulled himself out of bed.

Parish poured himself a glass of milk and gulped it down, then walked down the stairs from the upstairs rooms to the worship to see if there were any late-night ponies come to pray. He had turned off the outside lights to discourage anypony getting caught up in the affairs of Reddington and Sunrise, but he didn't know if it would keep out the most faithful.

To his relief, only one pony was in the worship hall, and he recognized the sitting form of Red from the back of the pews. Parish trotted up the center aisle toward his old friend, and came to a stop beside him. Red was sitting on the ground, polishing an assault rifle with an oily rag.

"Evening, Red," Parish said.

"Evening, Sol," Red said.

Parish eyed the gun. "Did you feel like you needed to bless your weapon?"

"Nope." Red looked up at the religious tapestries above him. "Just liked the company in here, I suppose."

"You worship Adana, if I recall."

"The way I see it, Adana could be Solaris and Solaris could be Adana. Doesn't bother me none. In these recent days, all this seems to be the only thing that makes sense."

"Faith?"

"Yeah, that."

Parish sat next to him and breathed in the smells of the worship candles he had lit around the hall. "I admit, I took Sunrise's wings better as a Sol than I would have a few years ago," he said. "Faith makes these sorts of things easier to take."

"Yeah, but blind faith isn't the best idea," Red said.

"I didn't say it was blind." Parish smiled. "When I enrolled to be a Sol, my life was almost at an end. I thought I had nowhere to go, that I could accomplish nothing, that I would die young. Now, I am next in line to take over as Head Sol for this church. Faith isn't my means, it's my foundation."

"I suppose that's something along the lines of what I've got," Red said, checking over his gun. "I gotta tell you, Parish, sometimes it gets hard with all this going on to keep believing. I don't understand the half of what I've got into, and it's too easy to get lost."

"If belief were easy, we would not need faith. It's trying times like these that we are tested the most, and it's who you are in the dark that shines brightest in the light."

Red stared at him. "You've really been buying into the Solarist thing, haven't you?"

Parish smiled and stood up. "Well, they way I see it, I can 'buy into' Solaris and have something to believe in, or try to go back to my old life and buy into drugs again. Somehow, one is more reassuring than the next."

"I'm just going to try to find something worthwhile in this whole crazy trip," Red said. "I agree to one easy job, and now I'm polishing an assault rifle in a church in case the IS comes bursting through that front door. I'd leave if I could, honest."

"Really?" Parish chuckled. "I can hardly imagine you doing that."

"Why not?"

"That girl."

"Oh, and why is that?"

Parish rolled his eyes. "Come on, Red, we've known each other too long for you to play dumb. I won't tell you that you like her in _that_ way, but you've at least made yourself her protector. You're the one who sprinted in, cradling her in your arms and wouldn't leave until you knew she would live."

"I just didn't want her to die," Red said, looking away.

"No, you didn't," Parish said, "but knowing you, it's because you've gotten yourself thinking you're her guardian. Kind of sweet, really."

Red put down the cleaning cloth and slung the assault rifle over his shoulder. He stepped up behind the pulpit and looked at the baptism sand pit that stood beneath a massive mural of the coming of Solaris. Parish joined him, after a moment, and didn't even complain about the gun.

"I don't know what I'm doing, alright?" Red said.

"Not many of us do," Parish said. "The best we can do is to keep going, and pretend like we have a grip on things. You're tough, Red. You'll make it."

Red shook his head. "It's not me I'm worried about."

"She'll be fine, you've all just got to be more careful."

"You say that like it's easy."

"Is anything?"

Parish flicked his tail and went to attend to one of the candles that was flickering out. He snuffed out the dying flame, then lit again so it burned even brighter. He smiled, but when he turned back, Red was gone. Parish sighed, but didn't go after him.

He went around the worship hall, relighting candles and giving occasional glances up at the paintings of Solaris on the wall. He muttered prayers under his breath and tried not to feel so exasperated.

* * *

Downtown Skyhall wasn't a very active place after dark, so Noctilucent, for the most part, had the sidewalk to himself. He walked between spindly skyscrapers that stretched above the mountain peaks to watch over Amperdam in the valley. Many of them had lights flickering inside of them, even if they were empty of ponies.

A car rolled by, coasting on its brakes as it rolled down one level of the city toward another one. Noctilucent kept his face hidden from whoever was in the car, though he wasn't sure why. Then again, he wasn't sure why he was out of the hospital. He kicked a can away from path and kept close to the walls of office buildings and shops that stood next to the sidewalk.

He hadn't been able to stand being in that hospital for a minute more, and had had to go somewhere else. He hadn't cared much where he was going, and still didn't. Skyhall was an unfamiliar city, but Noctilucent preferred it that way.

A spinner flew overhead, hovering a moment before heading on to the hospital. The place was crawling with IS agents who barked at each other and shoved ponies aside to try to keep their control tight on the building. It made Noctilucent sick to his stomach to see them acting like that in a place with so many ponies hurt or dying.

There was only one building in the whole district he was in that drew the eye. A massive church was built into the rock of the mountain, and its sharp towers rose above the smaller buildings around it. The lights were off, but that didn't mean it was closed. Noctilucent hesitated, but was drawn to it like a moth to flame. He felt like the church was calling him, in a way few had in the past twenty years.

He pushed open one of the large doors of the church and walked inside. As he had expected, the inside of the Solarist Church was covered in lit candles in addition to the electric lights in some of the corners.

"Hello?" he called.

There was a moment of silence, then a pony stuck his head out from behind the pulpit. He was dressed in a long, white cloak and looked at Noctilucent with interest. "Yes, hello!" he said. "What brings you here?"

Noctilucent looked up and shrugged. "The same thing that brings anypony to church?"

The stallion smiled and hurried down the steps and front aisle toward Noctilucent. The cloak he wore fluttered as he went, and his eyes were bright. "Welcome to the Church of the Heavenly Solstice," he said when he had reached Noctilucent. "My name is Parish, and I'm a Sol in training. Do you have any questions?"

"Is it okay if I sit in a pew?" Noctilucent asked.

"Yes, of course," Parish said. "Might I ask if you need some help?"

"I've been a Solarist for ten years," Noctilucent said. "I'll be just fine, Sol. I just need a little quiet, is all."

"Of course. Just call if you need help."

Noctilucent nodded and walked to a pew in the back row. The seats were as hard as they had always been, but he ignored them. He bent his head down and leaned forward in the pew, like he was praying. The problem was, he couldn't bring himself to do it. He knew he should pray, but his mind wandered no matter how he tried.

All he could think about was Starlight, and where she could be in the city. None of her friends had come to the hospital, and in a town as big as Skyhall, the chances of finding her were slim. His stomach felt like ice when he thought how close he had been to finding her again, but how she had just slipped from his grasp.

The church certainly felt much cooler to him when he thought about Starlight. It was like the thought of her sent icy chills down his back. Whether it was because he wasn't able to find her or because he started to think she didn't want to be found, he didn't know.

Noctilucent kept his voice low and head bent. "Just let me find Starlight," he said. "Please, if you're there, help me find her. She's a good girl and I . . . I screwed up with her. If you're there, just help me find her."

He wasn't sure if he felt better, but Noctilucent at least felt satisfied, done. He stood up from the pew and began to shamble out. The church had a thick, stuffy kind of air to it, and he could hardly stand it for too long. He walked out of the pew and headed for the doors.

Before he did, however, he saw a pony emerge into the worship hall out of the corner of his eye. The tan pony caught his eye, but he wasn't sure why. If the stallion had seen him, he hadn't done anything about it. Noctilucent dismissed it, and walked out of the church. The world outside seemed comparatively bright, and he appreciated the cool air.

It wasn't until Noctilucent was halfway back to the hospital that he began to get a bad feeling about the pony he had seen in the church. He racked his mind for why that pony had seemed familiar to him, but the answer seemed to elude him. Then, just as he reached the hospital, it hit him.

When it did, Noctilucent's stomach dropped and his heart felt as cold as ice. The reason that pony had seemed familiar was because his face was plastered on wanted posters all across Teton. A familiar face of the smuggler traveling with Professor Staten and Starlight.

Noctilucent galloped into the hospital, and headed right for the break room that Fresco had taken up residence in. His heart beat fast and sweat ran down his head, but the stallion didn't pay attention. He was going to save his daughter.

* * *

Starlight couldn't sleep. She lay on her side, careful to keep her damaged leg up, on a hard cot in the basement of the church. The sheets were starchy and the pillow might as well have been cardboard. The big dark room was devoid of anything interesting other than a window that was more of a slit near the back. It let in some moonlight, but only just enough to see with. Sunrise snored gently somewhere across the room, but Starlight couldn't tell where. Staten was quiet, and was sleeping about three rows away.

She turned on her back with a sigh and stared up at a ceiling she couldn't see. The whole place felt damp, like the air had been soaked in a dish rag before being dumped in the room. Starlight took long, deep breaths and grimaced after every one.

A door at the top of a set of rickety stairs opened and Red stood, silhouetted in the doorway. He looked around, and trotted down the stairs and over toward Starlight. He placed the assault rifle slung over his back next to a cot beside Starlight's, and then jumped into the bed. He didn't say a word to Starlight, and nor she to him, but she felt like something had been said between them nonetheless.

Clouds raced to cover up the moon, and Starlight finally began to find a little bit of sleep in the dank basement. Her eyes began to flutter shut, and her breathing slowed. Then, just as her mind was ready to drop off to sleep, she heard a bang from upstairs.

Starlight's eyes shot open, and she sat up. She looked around, hoping it was nothing, but the bang came again. It was the bang of something heavy hitting on wood. Her stomach sank.

"Ugh, what is it?" Sunrise asked from his cot. "Can't ponies wait until it's day to come worship? It's not eve Sunday!"

There was a pause, then the banging came again, louder this time. Red was already up and with the assault rifle once again over his shoulder. Starlight couldn't see much in the dark, but could almost hear his grimace.

"Something's not right," he said.

The door at the top of the staircase burst open, and Parish switched the lights on. Everypony covered their eyes and grunted as white light flooded their visions, and by the time they could see again Parish was already rushing down toward them.

"The IS," he said between breaths. "They're here!"

Everypony was out of bed now. Red ran to the corner where their bags were packed and rifled through them. He pulled out extra ammo and slammed them into his gun before throwing a couple saddlebags on his back.

"Time to leave. Now!"

Starlight fought to get up, but her leg still ached. She bit her lip and tried to keep quiet, but Red had to rush to her side.

"I got you," he said.

"I don't need your help," she said.

"Right now isn't the time to debate this, Starlight. I can help you move, but we have to go!" He turned to Parish. "Is there a back way out of here?"

Parish nodded. "Yeah, but you'll have to cut across a street filled with IS cars."

"We don't have much of a choice," Red said. "We have to go. Stall them as best you can, will you?"

Parish muttered under his breath, but agreed. He pointed to a wooden door at the far end of the basement. "That way is to the alley behind the church. You'll have to sprint across the street to get to your RV."

"Right," said Red. "Thanks for the help, Parish . . . good luck."

"You too, Red."

Parish ran back upstairs while the crew in the basement made their way toward the door. Red dragged Starlight along, careful to keep weight off her bad leg. He had to hold her with one hoof and the gun with the other, so he burst through the wooden door by ramming it with his shoulder.

The door took him into a narrow alley outside that stank with mold, but was hidden from view of the IS. He could hear them burst through the front door of the church and begin shouting. Red turned right and began to head down the alley toward the open street, and the RV parked under a tree beyond.

Starlight was breathing hard, and Red had to hold her tight to keep her from falling down. "Almost there," he kept telling her. "We're almost there, just hold on."

She nodded and used her three good legs to keep up with Red's steady trot, but just barely. Sunrise and Staten rushed behind them, and soon they burst out of the alley. The street, as Parish had said, was swarming with cars. Most of the IS faced away from them, and they could see a clear avenue to the RV on the other side of the street.

Red let Starlight get off of him. "I'll provide cover," he said. "I'll take Staten across and start the RV, then you and Sunrise get over there and get in, okay? We have to get out of here as fast as possible."

Starlight nodded, and Sunrise slipped a hoof around her to keep her upright. She watched Red raise the assault rifle to his shoulder, while Staten clutched a pistol in one hoof. They looked both ways, then dashed across the street. If the IS saw them, they didn't make any indication of it.

Staten and Red climbed into the RV parked under a tree on the street, and a few moments later the vehicle started up. Sunrise nodded to Starlight, and they began to lope across the street. Starlight's leg burned, and she bit her lip until it began to bleed. Her muscles complained and tried to shut down on her, but she was determined to stop them.

Halfway across the street, though, they gave out and Starlight tumbled to the ground. She let out a cry and writhed on the ground, holding on to her bandaged flank. Sunrise looked down at her, not sure what to do. She could hear Red yelling at her, and then yelling from the direction of the IS.

From the corner of her vision, Starlight could see IS agents start to move toward her. Cautious at first, but then faster when they realized what was happening. The sound of a rifle split the night, and bullets sparked at the hooves of the IS agents.

Red was firing away at them, giving them cover fire. The IS agents, however, were not so easily taken. They pulled guns and began to fire back at Red and the RV. Their attention, however, was shifted when Sunrise began to pull Starlight across the street. They yelled at him to stop, then shot above his head. Starlight was staring up at his face, twisted in concentration as he dragged her. She could hardly hear anything, but she could definitely see when he got shot.

His body seemed to shudder, like there was something not quite right with it and it was trying to figure it out. Then another bullet hit him, and Sunrise spun like a top and fell to the street. He lay there, moaning and bleeding next to Starlight. Red tried to move toward him, but concentrated fire from the IS threw him off. It was all he could to keep them pinned down, now behind some of their cars.

Starlight was tired. More tired than she had ever felt. She was tired of the shooting, of the yelling, of the fast-paced chases away from everypony, from a government that was hellbent on capturing them no matter what they had to do.

Starlight was tired.

She crawled over to Sunrise and lay on top of him. He was breathing, but in small, little breaths. His mouth hung open and his eyes stared up. He was dying. Starlight pressed herself over his wounds, and closed her eyes. Tears ran down her cheeks as she stooped low over him.

Starlight had never been a pony to pray, but she did now. She prayed for all of the bad to go away. For the IS, for the bullet wounds, for all the terror and pain to disappear and for her to just be with her friends in peace once again. She wanted it more than she could have ever known, and she found that she was yelling them out.

She prayed and prayed, while bullets flew over head. She prayed hard, prayed for peace. And then, suddenly, it came true.

* * *

Like a switch had been turned, the RV, Red, Staten, Starlight, and Sunrise just . . . weren't in Skyhall anymore. It was if one second they were, and the next they were gone. Where they had been on a rough street a moment before, suddenly there were in a small patch of forest, standing within a large, smoking circle of burnt grass and leaves. The smell of ozone danced through the air as Staten and Red put down their guns and looked around. The only sound was that of the rumbling RV engine.

Starlight opened her eyes, and blinked as she adjusted to the light glinting through the leaves overhead. She was still lying on top of Sunrise. A Sunrise who was, in fact, breathing normally once again. She ran her hoof over his chest where the bullet wounds had been, but only found smooth skin. Her throat caught, and tears came once more as she lay on him and cried, in joy and relief and a dozen other emotions she didn't know she had.

Red saw her leaning over Sunrise, and rushed over to her. When he was next to her, however, he slowed and stared down at her. In utter silence, his mouth opened, then shut again.

Starlight looked up at him. "What?"

He wordlessly pointed to her forehead, so she brought a hoof up and patted her head. At first she found nothing, then she felt like she suddenly had a small pipe sticking out of her head. A pipe that ended in a point.

A horn.


End file.
